Attachments
by peppalina
Summary: He glared down at his hands. Big hands: good for working, killing, and hitting. It was a simple arrangement. Sex only, no word to the captain or crew, no public displays of affection, and NO ATTACHMENT. Why did he have to go and ruin everything? Firefly, episode by episode, focusing on everything that happens off-screen. Jayne/Kaylee pairing
1. Serenity Part 1

Summary

He glared down at his hands. Big hands: good for working, killing, and hitting. It was a simple arrangement. Sex only, no word to the captain or crew, no public displays of affection, and NO ATTACHMENT. Why did he have to go and ruin everything?

Author's Note: I do not own the series of Firefly nor the movie Serenity nor the characters. Rated MA for sex, violence, and fun words (both English and Mandarin).

Serenity (part 1)

It was her idea. Sex. Just sex. No word to the others. No public displays of affection. Just satisfying their natural urges. They were two consenting adults, what could possibly go wrong? As Kaylee had put it when Jayne had first come aboard, "I'm just a gal with needs! Everybody on this ship's got somebody and for months now I ain't had nothing twixt my neathers weren't run on batteries!" Jayne avoided eye contact with the sweet little mechanic as she exclaimed her frustrations to him in the corridor as he had finished dropping his small bag of belongings and large bag of weapons down into his room.

"I'll be in my bunk," he murmured gruffly and turned away from her round face. It glowing with what he imagined (or was it hoped) was either arousal or her general enthusiasm about life. In his first hours on Serenity, the mechanic had attached herself to him and had been chatting his ear off non-stop.

It was almost three weeks after he had come aboard and she still hadn't warmed him up to the idea. At least, he hadn't mentioned it since. They had gravitated toward each other though. Two objects in space caught by the same invisible gravitational pull. The captain and the companion did their arguing, the pilot and the soldier did their wedded life, and that left the muscle and the mechanic to spend their lonely hours in dim space as they wished.

She was in the engine room shoulder deep in some machine with too many moving parts. Her mouth was still running, but all Jayne could focus on was the way her back curved under her dirty tank top and the way her jumpsuit hung around her hips as she twisted to get a deeper reach into the opening filled with gears and grease.

"And that's when I told Cap'n that he best get a better transmitter or we won't even have to worry 'bout the converter! The whole thing'll fall right out of the sky b'fore you can say what's what!" Kaylee withdrew from the hole with a smudge of grease across the bridge of her nose and rosy cheeks from the heat in the closed space.

"Huh." Jayne tried to make his non-committal grunt sound responsive instead of oblivious. Kaylee beamed at her audience and new friend before diving back into the machine.

"Say, Kaylee, are you a'most done up in there?" Jayne asked, his eyes taking in the glisten of the orange lights reflecting off of her sweaty shoulders. He rocked forward onto his feet from his spot where he had been leaning against the wall of the engine room.

"Yeah, pretty much." Kaylee replied, eyes still on the moving parts, "Just prettying it up a bit, s'all."

Jayne stepped forward, the hum of the engines seemed to be deafening and muted all at once. His body was going faster than his brain was ok with. "I been thinkin."

Kaylee pulled out of the machine, her expression somewhere between apprehensive and excited. "'Bout what?"

Jayne reached out and put one hand on her shoulder and one on her hip. They stood there awkwardly for a moment, just looking at each other. Jayne's mind finally caught up with his body and he was filled with panic. 'What the hell are you doing, Jayne?' his brain shouted, 'Either kiss her or don't, stop lookin' like an idiot!'

They both went in for the kiss at once, resulting in Jayne's nose smashing into Kaylee's forehead and Kaylee's mouth landing somewhere on Jayne's jaw. Jayne let out an awkward laugh but Kaylee didn't stop, she found his lips and stepped into his body. Big hands ran down her back, circling her in warmth. Small hands ran up his chest and nimble fingers found their way up his neck and through his hair.

She guided him with her hands gripping his hair, tugging gently as she nipped his lips and stepped back toward her hammock. " _Shuan ren chuang_?" Kaylee whispered seductively against his lips.

"No," he replied. Kaylee opened her eyes and glanced up at him, curious. "No bed" he murmured gruffly.

Jayne then lifted her up and pinned her against the wall next to the door, one of the few spaces in the room without moving parts. He could feel Kaylee's smile as he pressed his lips back to hers. She wrapped her legs around his hips. His bulge was pressing against his fly painfully. Jayne bucked his hips against her and muffled his groan in her hair. Kaylee snaked her arms down and slipped her jumpsuit down off of her hips.

' _Haojile!_ There weren't barely nothing holding them up' Jayne thought briefly. His thoughts stopped, however, when Kaylee's hands moved the few inches to his belt and began to relieve the pressure on his erection. His pants dropped in moments and her nimble fingers of one hand were teasing him with their gentle pressure through the thin fabric of his shorts. He half instinctually thrust against her once again, but regretted it when it made her let go of his shaft. She began to wriggle slightly so Jayne set her down. He had barely noticed that she couldn't touch the ground. She finished sliding her panties down and they fell on top of the already crumpled heap that was her jumpsuit. In their brief intermission, Jayne pulled his shirt over his head.

He was standing there in nothing but his shorts and looking across at the mechanic who was standing there in nothing but her filthy white tank top. Jayne's eyes took in the whole picture at first, and then focused on the little peaks in the engine-grease covered fabric. With careful hands, trained with the meticulous work of cleaning guns, he firmly grasped the bottom edge of the tank top and pulled it up over her head. He watched as her nipples became even larger and harder as the fabric was pulled across them. Kaylee raised her arms obediently and shook her hair free after the garment was off. Her face broke into a half smirk as her fingers pinched the top edge of his shorts and slowly, oh so slowly, pulled the hem down until his firm penis bounced up to meet the open air.

Kaylee's eyes took on a hungry look. Before she could pounce on her prey, which was gleefully pointing her in the face, Jayne put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her gently back into the wall. "My turn first," he whispered, leaning in and pressing a kiss into her lips. He carefully explored the new territory now opened up before him. He kissed her chin, left a line of pecks along her jaw and down her neck. Pausing at the nape, he breathed in the smell of her. Kaylee shivered slightly as he nipped her shoulder and began to move lower.

His hands were big, but for once, they weren't clumsy. First, they cupped her breasts, as though weighing them, seeking an understanding. He ran his hands down to her soft waist and rested there. With his tongue Jayne traced a spiral around the nipple on one of her breasts, circles made smaller and smaller until he came to the apex. Gently, he drew the firm flesh into his mouth and gripped the base with his teeth. His tongue continued making tight circles around the sensitive nub. Kaylee's spine arched slightly and she let in a slight gasp as more resistance was created against his teeth. Jayne replaced his mouth's grip with an index finger and thumb and moved on to her other breast. Before long, her hands were on his shoulders and she was biting her lip, holding back a moan.

Satisfied, Jayne knelt down and settled onto his knees. After leaving another line of small kisses down her stomach, he stopped and looked back up to Kaylee's face. She was stroking her own nipples then. Her bottom lip was pinned between her teeth. Her eyes opened when she felt him stop.

"Can I?" He asked. Maybe she had changed her mind.

" _Shi de_ , oh yes please," she smiled faintly. Her lips were swollen from their kissing and her eyelids were heavy with arousal.

Jayne grasped her around the waist and lifted her up slightly before pinning her against the wall once again. He lifted her knees up to rest on his shoulders so she was spread before him. Jayne raised two fingers to her opening and carefully parted the soft brown hair to reveal her wet, pink layers. He began by licking her from base to clit and back again. Briefly he flicked his tongue deeper into her warmth and tasted her desire. Kaylee braced herself against the wall as Jayne focused his attention on the swollen clit. He started with circles and then drew the dip of his tongue in a five pointed star.

Kaylee's moans were joining with the hum of Serenity's engines to fill Jayne's ears. He was working on drawing out as many chinese characters are he could remember when he felt her getting close. He shaped his lips in a small circle around her swollen clit and sucked gently on her. Taking cue from the rhythmic clenching of her body and her quiet whimpering moans he raised a finger and started sliding in and out of her clenching lips, the pace was slow at first but soon, he sped up, moving in rhythm with her own throbbing, helping her ride out her climax. Jayne held Kaylee up until her shaking stopped. Carefully, he set her feet back down onto the metal floor.

" _Chu sheng!_ That was fantastic," Kaylee breathed into his chest as he stood up before her. Jayne kissed her sweaty forehead, it was a tender gesture which surprised even him at the time. "You ready for my turn now?" Kaylee asked, the spark was back in her eyes and her rough palm was rubbing down the length of his hot shaft, made recently hard once again by the sound of her voice and the closeness of her body.

"We're comin' up on the vessel," the captain's voice came in over the speaker above them, "Zoe and Jayne meet me in the dockin' bay in fifteen."

"So much for your turn," Jayne muttered, dropping his forehead against Kaylee's for exactly one second before stepping back from her and hastily pulling clothes on. Kaylee pulled up her panties and yanked the undershirt over her head. Jayne was quickly heading to the door, but Kaylee touched his arm, stopping him for a moment.

"I'll get my turn, _bie dan xin_ ," Kaylee sealed the promise with one of her beaming smiles before Jayne set off toward his bunk for his supplies.

"Jayne, I don't pay you to sit there thinking," Mal's voice broke into his train of thought, "We're comin' up on the ship now, you best be ready."

Jayne nodded from within his heavy suit. 'You ain't paid me for nothin' yet,' he thought. He shifted his weight inside the suit. Soon enough he'd be weightless, it's just the before and after that's uncomfortable.

The goods were intact, and other than a brush with the feds the job went down fine. He, Mal, and Zoe got it all on board and stowed, and when it seemed pretty damn clear that the feds weren't following them he made his way back to his bunk.

"What the hell are alliance doin' this far out into space to begin with?" Jayne muttered to himself as he pushed his stairway open. He descended the stairs into darkness and fumbled around for the switch that he still wasn't used to finding before he suddenly heard a snap followed by the sizzle of electricity.

"Shining the light of civilization," an unmistakably cheerful voice spoke out from behind him. Spinning around defensively he raised his fists in preparation to destroy anyone who thought they could get the better of him.

It was Kaylee. Completely naked Kaylee.

"My turn," she whispered. Jayne glanced up the still open stairway where he could see the ceiling of the corridor and hear voices from the cockpit. He thought about it for a half second longer than his teased member wanted him to before closing the hatch and scooping up Kaylee in his arms. They kissed as though they hadn't seen each other in years as opposed to hours. Kaylee caught Jayne's tongue in her mouth and sucked on it. Jayne's knees felt wobbly and he almost dropped her. Instead, he turned and half-dropped, half-set her on his narrow bunk.

"Now time for some _shuang ren chuang_ " he muttered gruffly in between tearing pieces of clothing from his body. Logically, he couldn't quite tell what was making this situation so very urgent, but a man should never be asked to think logically when a very beautiful (very naked) woman is asking for a turn to please him.

Now fully relieved of every scrap of clothing, Jayne got into the bunk, and in a heartbeat, Kaylee went from being reclined seductively to sitting before him with her hands around his cock. Her hot, wet tongue started from the base of his shaft and sent a shudder through his body. Smiling at the effect she had on him, she guided her tongue up the underside of his shaft, every centimeter awakening another wave of sensation through Jayne's limbs. She reached the head and got to work alternating between sucking and swirling her tongue in treacherous circles around the sensitive skin. Jayne groaned deep in the back of his throat as he ran his hand down Kaylee's cheek lightly, not wanting to disturb her work.

Jayne's muscles began to tense, the fingers he was running through Kaylee's hair stopped and his hand formed a loose fist. He was so close. He could feel the beast within him rearing up its head, threatening to burst through his chest at any moment. His groans turned into an almost choked growl as he bucked up against her mouth. His balls had just tightened when Kaylee's hand cupped them in a surprisingly vice-like grip. Kaylee lifted her head and kissed Jayne's surprised face, one hand stationary on his hot and throbbing dick and the other holding back his impending orgasm. "Wh-why'd you stop?" he choked.

Her eyes narrowed as she clearly whispered, "I want you to fuck me, _cao bi_ " A smile spread across her face after she said the words that Jayne had been hoping to hear all day. His fist tightened around her hair and he pulled her head back slightly, exposing her pale neck. Jayne laid her down onto the stiff bunk mattress and began kissing and nipping at her skin.

With his right hand behind her head, his left made its way between her legs. First one, and then two fingers thrust deep inside her hot core, and then, like switching off the safety on a gun, his thumb began to rub her clitoris. Immediately, she clenched around his fingers. He withdrew his hand and lined himself up at her begging entrance. Jayne closed his teeth around the skin of her shoulder at the base of her neck and bit down lightly as he pushed into her.

The first thrust brought forth a gasp from Kaylee and a muffled grunt from Jayne. She pulled herself tight around him to feel his length and his girth. He pulled out slightly before thrusting in again. With each thrust deeper and harder, he began grinding himself against her burning clit. Kaylee arched her back and Jayne slid his arm beneath her, pulling her close to his chest.

Mid thrust, he turned over and set her on top of him. From his new vantage point, he saw the curve of her bouncing breasts slide down into the soft belly and curved hips, but what seemed so passive and beautiful before was engaged and enthralled now. She angled herself over him and worked her hips forward and back, creating new and infinitely exciting sensations for him. It must have been doing something good for her too because she began to rhythmically clench around him once again. What had just seemed incredibly sexy before was now setting off fireworks inside his head.

With one final shuddering thrust from Jayne and one final buck from Kaylee's hips, Jayne felt as though his body had gone numb. After so many waves of sensation, he forgot how to feel. Kaylee seemed to be going through something similar as she flopped down onto the bunk beside him.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and she threw an arm across his sweaty chest and they just lay there together in mutual contentment. They lay like that for so long that Jayne wondered if Kaylee was asleep, but then his counterpart spoke.

"So whaddaya think?" She asked, tracing intricate designs across his chest, sweat caused the hairs on his chest to stick down and up in unnatural patterns. Her gentle touch was almost ticklish. Her fingertips brought his mind back to the present. To the rough blanket on the firm bunk in the old ship hurtling through dark space.

"Just sex," Jayne replied, "nothing messy, no one knows, no c'mitments… are you sure it's gonna work?"

"It'll work if we follow the rules," Kaylee said in a matter of fact tone.

"Deal."

Kaylee smiled and hopped out of the bunk and began to get dressed. "I'm glad that you're up for this, I've been waiting for something like this for years!" She finished getting dressed and made her way to the stairs. "G'night… buddy!" She blew him a kiss and made her way up to the corridor and out of sight.

Jayne rolled over in his bunk and stared at his recently mounted wall of guns. His large palm resting on the warm spot which had been occupied by Kaylee. The spot was slowly growing cold, but his hand did not move.


	2. Serenity Part 2

Serenity (part 2)

They made it planet-side on Persephone in less than two days and without any trouble from those feds who scanned them before, but the captain seemed on edge. As they touched down, Jayne felt the pressure of real gravity drop weight into his limbs. The ship's gravity was good, almost like a moon. Not quite so weak as to put a hop in your step, but different enough that Jayne had missed the feeling of standing solidly on his own two feet.

Sunshine felt pretty damn good, too. Jayne had never been one to really stop and think about how beautiful it was to be revolving around a star. That is, he hadn't thought about it much until he saw Kaylee twirling her parasol. Suddenly, the sun felt just a little warmer and the dusty air of the eavestown docks didn't stink quite so much. He shook thoughts of anything but the job from his mind as he pulled on his coat and set off into the crowd after Mal and Zoe. Mal was the head, Zoe the brains, and that left him to be the muscle in case things went south.

As they entered Badger's hole Jayne sensed a fight before words even started. Any child sized bastard who would call Zoe a "little girl" and have that many armed men surrounding him at any time can't be anything more than a stinking _hun dan_. All of Jayne's assumptions were confirmed when the sniveling rodent refused to uphold his part of the job.

Aggravated and still penniless, they made their way back to Serenity. "Still don't know why we didn't leave that _wang ba_ in a puddle of his own blood," Jayne spat angrily.

"We'd be dead," Mal responded coolly, "can't get paid if we're dead."

"Can't get paid by crawling away like a bitty little bug neither, I got a share of job. Now let me do that math, but ten percent of nothin' is…" he mimed calculations in the air, venting his frustration. He glanced over to Zoe, but the humor was lost on her. Ever serious.

"We could just dump the cargo," Zoe said, drawing Jayne out of his frustration.

"No ruttin' way!" Jayne had heard enough, "I didn't sign onto this crew for the sights. You offer me a place on the crew and then we ain't got any good jobs since I arrived!"

Mal shut him up but agreed. It looked like the border planets were going to be their next destination.

'I guess Persephone's as much of shiny civilization as we're gonna see in a while,' Jayne thought as they returned to the ship. He caught a glimpse of Kaylee smiling and welcoming passengers aboard. 'Not that I'm really mindin' that right about now.'

The passengers consisted of some fussy doctor man, an old shepherd, and some random citizen type. Not that Jayne was much interested in new folk, but Kaylee couldn't get enough of them. As much as she loved the ship, she did miss seeing new faces. She absolutely glowed when Shepherd Book offered to cook dinner with her, and she was striking up conversations with the doctor and the clumsy citizen every chance she got while they were settling themselves.

They all sat down to dinner together and ate like a big family, instead of what they really were: a bunch of crooks and thieves trying to hide like wolves in sheep skin and act nice in front of the paying strangers. Kaylee was grinning from ear to ear just watching them eat and listening to them talk as though the things they were saying weren't boring as space junk. Jayne sat and ate, silent for the most part, the food was good but his voice wasn't needed in dull chats of terraforming and border moons.

Kaylee struck up a conversation with the young doctor. He was from a central planet and she was mooning over him. Jayne stopped eating. He felt an angry little monster somewhere in his chest. It was small, but it was there. What right did this doctor have to be smiling and laughing with her? This stranger was chatting up Kaylee and they hadn't ever even met before today.

Jayne suddenly envisioned himself throwing his fork across the table and into the throat of the prissy doctor, or just standing up and challenging him to fisticuffs like a pair of real men. He shook his head and laughed. 'He don't deserve a second thought,' he reckoned. His thoughts turned audible before he really knew what was happening.

"Little Kaylee here just wishes he was a gynecologist." He laughed to himself. Suddenly all the eyes in the room were on him.

"Jayne," Mal snapped, "you will keep a civil tongue in that mouth or I will cut it out. Is there an understanding between us?"

Jayne's defenses rose. "Hey, you don't pay me to talk pretty," he retorted, "Jus' cause Kaylee gets lubed up over some big-city dandy…"

"Walk away from this table." Mal spoke with the calm authority which sent chills down Jayne's back. It was eerily similar to the tone his father would take right before the fists would fly.

'No man takes that tone with me and lives,' the voice inside his head murmured. Seething with anger, Jayne filled his plate and stormed off to his bunk.

Kaylee was silent for much of the remainder of dinner. Jayne was right, though, she was quite taken with the doctor, even though the man barely said two words to anyone. After dinner, she and Wash cleared the table while Book took a plate to Inara and the other passengers wandered off to their quarters.

Wash was his usual self, smiling and joking. She liked him, he was always comfortable to be around, but he was married. He never even told her that she was pretty. He complimented her mechanical skills and cracked jokes about her cooking (the "cake" she had tried making for his birthday was still a running joke among the crew), but he never made her feel like an adult. She was everyone's _mei mei._ That's why everyone was so protective of her. Jumping in to save her honor before she could even think about defending it herself.

'Jayne does,' she thought as she dried and stacked the plates in the cupboard. 'He listens to me, I've told him my whole life story jus'abouts and he hasn't once told me I was a kid or said I was too young to have thoughts and feelings.' She scowled down at the towel as she rubbed it inside of a cup that was already dry. 'But then again he did just ruin my chances with that new doctor, poor man can't even look me in the eye without blushing now. Doctor Tam prolly thinks I'm just some virgin kid who can't hold her own… that Jayne, it's all his fault.'

She hung the cup by its handle on one of the curved hooks above the counter. 'He's been a bad boy,' she thought, a smirk finding its way to the edge of her mouth, 'but then again, so have I…'

"We can take turns," she murmured out loud. At that she turned tail and left the dining room leaving Wash looking confused.

"Wait… 'take turns?' So I take it it's 'my turn' right now?" Wash called after her, "and then I'll go back to doing my _job_ which is keeping us flying and on track, not like that is important or anything," He continued muttering to himself as he dropped the rest of the dishes into the soapy water.

Kaylee found herself pushing open the stairs to Jayne's bunk without permission for the second time in three days. As she descended the stairs she saw him kneeling on the floor with a gun dismantled in front of him. He didn't look up with she came down the steps. Jayne kept his eyes down, fingers touching each of the parts gingerly as he slid them back into their proper place in a slow, methodical fashion.

Looking over at the small desk Kaylee saw the full plate of food sitting there, untouched. "Why'd you say that at dinner?" She asked, breaking the silence.

"'Cause it was in my head." Jayne replied as he screwed a long cylindrical piece into the barrel of the gun. His manner reminded Kaylee of working on Serenity's engines. Her hands knowing what to do and just doing it. "Was I right?"

Kaylee watched him slide more small pieces together to make the whole object take shape. "You know you were," she replied. This whole conversation was much less heated than she had rehearsed in her mind as she was coming down the hallway.

"No, I don't," Jayne said slowly. The completed gun rested in his hands. He cocked it just to listen to the gun speak. Everything sounded right, so he set it on the desk and stood up, slowly bringing himself to his full height. "But I'll bet you're here for me to check on that, ain't that it?" He spoke in a smooth tone, refusing to betray the ocean of emotions behind his eyes.

A sultry smirk found its way onto her slightly pouted lips. "Check what?" She spoke with as innocent a voice as she could muster.

Jayne bridged the distance between them and slipped a broad hand around her waist. "You want me to see just how lubed up you got over that city-boy, tell me that ain't right." Kaylee saw something flash through his eyes but his body stayed as tense as a wall. As though answering his question, she opened her jumpsuit, the one with the comical teddy bear stitched to the leg.

Jayne kissed her roughly and followed her hands' directions. He slipped one hand down through the unzipped opening. Kaylee pressed her body closer to his, tilting her face up into his kiss. Her arms reached up and wound around his shoulders. Jayne's left arm supported her around her lower back while his right hand was slipping into her panties.

"Tell me you're a little slut who can't keep her mind out of the gutter." Jayne demanded, his voice was rough but quiet. His palm was cupped against her pelvis as his index and middle fingers plunged into a hot, wet space.

Kaylee gasped slightly. "I'm a little slut," she moaned softly against his lips causing Jayne's pants to feel too tight again, "who can't help but get lubed up over the - _ooh!_ " Anything else she was planning on saying got lost in a shudder of ecstasy. Jayne scowled and withdrew his hand. This didn't feel right. Yeah, he knew she was just using him for sex, that was their plan. But using him for sex after gettin' turned on by another guy? That just didn't settle with him. Kaylee opened her eyes and was looking at him with her confusion written all over her face.

"Wh-" she started to ask something when Wash came in over the intercom.

"Jayne? We could use some muscle on the cargo area, immediately would be better than soon."

"Got it," Jayne said loudly. Without saying anything more, he zipped Kaylee's jumpsuit up half way and headed up his ladder. A bewildered Kaylee scurried up behind him.

In the corridor, Kaylee was too curious to settle for Jayne's brisk walk and jogged down toward the cargo hold. She reached the doorway just a second before Jayne.

"What's going on he-" she started to say, but then a shot rang out. The world stood still for a moment and then she fell. Jayne saw it all as though in slow motion.

Someone shot Kaylee. Someone had to pay for that.

By the time the world around him sped back up to normal speed, he was halfway across the room with murder in his eyes. The shepherd stepped between him and the idiot passenger with the gun. Book had knocked him down, but he was still very much alive.

"Out of the way." Jayne demanded.

"You're not killing this man," Shepherd responded, standing guard over the _jianhuo_.

"Not right away," Jayne seethed, no, the man had to suffer for what he just did.

"He's no threat," Book said, as though anyone could believe that.

"No threat?" Jayne all but shouted, "Look at what he did to Kaylee!" 'Our Kaylee. My Kaylee.' "Did you see what he did? Now move, _lao bu side_!"

"No"

"Move!"

"Not gonna happen."

To keep from losing all control, Jayne slipped into his mercenary mindset. Calmly he raised his gun to be eye level with the shepherd and cocked it in his face. "I ain't jokin' with you preacher," he said solemnly. Kaylee's shooter would be destroyed.

"Jayne," spoke a voice from above, "just tie him up." Glancing up, Jayne saw Zoe cock her shotgun and point it at the shooter. He quickly weighed his options and decided to follow her orders. As he tightened the bindings on the man's mouth, wrists, and ankles, he heard Kaylee cry out from the other side of the cargo bay.

He stood and watched Mal, Inara, and the doctor carry her to the medical quarters. After dragging and depositing the unconscious body of the would-be murderer unceremoniously into a storage room and locking it, Jayne quickly made his way to the vent system above the infirmary. Silently, he crouched and watched the whole procedure. As much as he hated the doctor for bargaining with Kaylee's life for his freedom, he did seem to be doing a good job. To keep calm Jayne counted the bullet fragments as they came out.

'Four, five, six…'

Finally the doctor started stitching her up again. When he was finished Mal spoke.

"Will she stabilize?"

"I can't say yet," the doctor replied.

"I want to know what's going on here," Inara interjected. She sounded as irked as Jayne felt. Who was this bastard to play with Kaylee's life… hell, _all_ of their lives.

Mal uncrossed his arms and started walking out of the infirmary, "Why don't we find out?"

Right on cue, Jayne jumped up, his legs ached from crouching for so long, but he knew where he was needed. He got to the cargo hold and caught the doctor from behind before he overtook the captain.

"No! Stay away from that!" The doctor cried from Jayne's hold.

"Where's the fed?" Mal asked.

"Secured," Jayne grunted coolly. Focusing his efforts on making the doctor uncomfortable. "Shepherd's with him. He seems to think he's not safe alone with me." At this he tightened his grip around the doctor's upper arm.

Mal reached the large metal cube and unlatched the lid.

"Well," he said, "let's see what a man like you would kill for." Ignoring the doctor's pleas, the captain kicked the lid off of the crate. Cold smoke rose from the dimly lit box; as the fog subsided they all saw the contents.

It was a girl.

So the doctor's sister was crazy, but some kind of special crazy, broke out of some alliance program. Apparently that was what the fed was after and the rest of them just got caught in the crossfire, Kaylee quite literally.

Jayne was enlisted to interrogate the fed, but before he could even get to the fun parts, the idiot caved and spewed his guts.

"They know everything!" he whined. The truth was written all over his face.

"Damnit, Lawrence! You _feiren, wuyong fantong ren zha_!" Jayne shook his head and put his knife back in its sheath. "They don't know nothin'." He shook his head. "I barely got started, this is just _chu sheng_ disappointing."

"Okay, you're right, but let me speak to your priorities: Money. There's a lot of profit in it for you if you help me."

"How much?" Jayne asked, keeping the _hun qiu_ talking.

"More than you can imagine!" Lawrence was doing it again, his face revealed the truth behind his exaggerated speech.

Jayne shook his head and left the storage room. It wasn't worth betraying the captain. Betraying the captain would mean leaving the ship, leaving the ship would mean leaving Kaylee, and he wasn't ready to do that yet.

He made his way to the captain and reported that the fed hadn't given up much information at all, probably just their location and maybe the type of ship, but nothing real damaging.

"What do we do now?" Jayne asked, arms crossed over his chest.

"The job," Mal replied simply. They were coming up on Whitehall. Finally, it looked like the job might actually go to plan.

Why don't things ever go to plan?

Jayne fired and reloaded and fired again. The rhythm was soothing. He watched man after man fall, clutching their wounded arms, shoulders, legs, and knees. Mal said to try not to kill anybody, but there were a few fatal shots, more to prove a point to Patience than anything else. Suddenly, his radio crackled to life, and his blood ran cold as he heard Wash's voice filtering through the earpiece.

"Reavers! Zoe, Mal, Jayne? Does anyone have their radio on? Why does no one ever have their radio on?! I said Reavers!"

Jayne stood and sprinted down the hill toward the captain and Zoe. Mal's _gorram_ radio wasn't on.

"Cap'n! Reavers! They follow'd us!"

At the feared words, the team sprung into action. In a matter of minutes, they were back at the ship. Jayne felt a twinge of relief through all of the fear that was surging through his veins when he saw the fed fall with a bullet in his head.

"Get Kaylee to the engine room," Mal ordered as he sprinted up the metal steps toward the cockpit.

Jayne nodded and ran to the infirmary. Despite the crowd gathered around them, Jayne snuck a kiss to her feverish temple as he gently scooped her up into his arms. Her bleary eyes drifted over to his for a brief moment before her heavy eyelids dropped again, either from pain or the surgical drugs.

Between Wash's piloting and Kaylee's directions, they managed to outrun the Reavers. The ship was in celebration. Jayne carefully picked up Kaylee and took her back to the infirmary. With the doctor tucking his sister in down the hall, the room was empty except for them.

"I was scared," Jayne murmured to her.

"We were all scared of the Reavers," she replied weakly. Her eyes were closed and her face was pale. A light sheen of sweat across her forehead caught the harsh white light of the infirmary.

"No," Jayne said as he turned the lights off, plunging them into a comfortable darkness, "I was afraid to lose you." He kissed her forehead gently and pulled the blanket up over her.

Kaylee didn't respond so Jayne assumed she was asleep again. Brushing her hair back from her face he kissed her lightly once more before heading up to the helm. He had to tell the captain what the fed had told him.

As his silhouette disappeared from the doorway Kaylee opened her eyes. She had heard every word.


	3. The Train Job

The Train Job

Jayne sat in a smoky bar sipping his grog and watched Mal make his move in Chinese Checkers. He grinned as Zoe took out half of Mal's pieces in a single turn. This was relaxing. They'd just completed a simple job where there were no hitches. They got paid like they were supposed to and life seemed to be going as it should. Back on the ship Kaylee was healing up really well under the doc's care and Jayne was almost ready to forgive him for being a _huai dan_ and getting her shot in the first place.

Over by the bar a drunk man shouted and raised his glass. "Sheaddup!" He bellowed, "I said sheaddup! I gots words." The man slurred and wobbled slightly as he looked at his glass in the air. "A toast… for this ass-pishus day!"

Jayne looked puzzled. "What day is it?" He asked Zoe, counting on his fingers.

"This is a glorious day for all the proud members of the allied planets," the drunk continued, launching into what sounded like a memorized speech. "Unification day! The end of the scumbag inipe'nents!"

Mal rose and made his way to the bar muttering, "I feel the need for another drink."

Ignoring the majority of the words said around him, Jayne was marveling at how little attention he had paid to the passing of time since joining Serenity's crew. It's been, what? Two months since he joined up? Huh, it seemed like just yesterday he stepped aboard for the first time, but then again he felt like it had been his home forever.

Someone called his name. "I didn't fight in no war!" he called back. Jayne glanced up and saw a full bar fight had broken out, no doubt started by Mal and the drunkard. Never being one to turn down a good fight, Jayne upended his drink, and picked up the stool he'd been sitting on.

He fought his way through the bar looking for Mal and Zoe, swinging the stool around him he knocked drunken slobs right and left, clearing a path for himself. Seeing that his crew mates weren't in the bar anymore he plowed his way to the door and threw himself into the tussle which had continued outside.

Three against about 20 weren't the best odds he'd dealt with, but they weren't the worst either. They were holding their own until the locals pulled their pistols out. Jayne couldn't help but feel annoyed. Why'd they have to go and ruin a good fight like that?

Wash pulled up in good time, as usual, and they all hopped into Serenity like she was their flaming chariot from heaven. Jayne smirked at the awe in the faces of the drunk locals as the doors closed behind them. With the previous job all wrapped up and the next one yet unannounced Jayne made his way to the makeshift gym he and, to his surprise Shepherd Book, constructed. With the decreased gravity on the ship it was important to keep up his strength.

Jayne had finished his warm up and had just started on the weights when he noticed Kaylee sitting on a box watching him.

"How long've you been sittin' there, _niao_?" He asked, resting the bench press bar on the hooks above his head.

"Not long, I just noticed you here and thought I'd watch." She smiled and settled herself onto the box. Jayne nodded and laid back again, picking up the weight laden bar and suddenly aware of his sweaty shirt clinging to his chest and how his muscled arms were on clear display for Kaylee's observing pleasure. Kaylee noticed this too, and almost forgot what she had wanted to tell him.

"Oh, we got a new job. Cap'n just finalized it. We're headin' there now." Her eyes slid from his wrist to his shoulder; she'd seen his muscles before obviously, and she knew how strong he was. He had made a habit of lifting her off her feet whenever he had a chance, especially when they were alone. But there was something enjoyable about watching him move. Her eyes slid farther down and took in his chest, stomach, and… "I should go. 'Nara's waitin' for me."

She stood and skipped off toward Inara's shuttle. It was always nice spending time with her.

Inara brushed her hair with gentle hands. "Your hair is lovely," Inara said in a soothing voice, "I'm sure the doctor would agree."

Kaylee's mind was elsewhere, thinking about calloused hands and tight abs. The doctor? Slowly her mind shifted from rough passion to serious angles and soft, skilled hands. "Simon? Oh… he's much too… I mean, I'm just…" the conflicting images in her head filtered through her emotions and came out as a stammer. "Do you think it looks better up?"

Inara's laughter was so beautiful. It reminded Kaylee of water splashing over rocks. "We can always experiment," she said, her soft fingertips brushing Kaylee's face. The soft touch sent waves of shimmering warmth flowing through her body.

'Experiment?' Kaylee thought, she could feel herself growing warmer at the thought.

"Who knows," Inara laughed, "we may even get crazy and wash your face!"

Kaylee mentally shook herself, Inara was like a sister to her. ' _Biaozi_ I must be horny to get turned on by just a touch… a soft, tender touch… _wo kao_ I need to find Jayne.'

"When's my turn?" Mal spoke from behind them.

Inara's demeanor turned from sensual and caring to firm and cold, "What did I say to you about barging into my shuttle?"

"That it was manly and impulsive?" Mal tried to put on a boyish grin but Inara scowled back at him.

"Yes, but my precise words were don't." Inara began putting her bush away and Kaylee frowned, already missing the other side of Inara.

"You're holding my mechanic in thrall, what am I supposed to do? And Kaylee, what is going on in my engine room! Was it space monkeys?"

"Cap'n it's your own fault. I had to rewire the grav thrusters because somebody won't replace that crappy compression coil." She loved Mal deeply, but it bothered her to no end that he refused to take her seriously when it came to caring for Serenity. She knew this ship inside and out and yet he never deferred to her expertise. 'She breaks you broke her,' he said to her once.

As expected he ignored her implication, "well get the place squared away. It's dangerous in there and I ain't payin' you to get your hair played at."

Kaylee rolled her eyes and waved a brief goodbye to Inara before heading to the engine room, leaving Mal behind in the shuttle.

They pulled up to a skyplex owned by a man named Niska. Jayne had never met him but he'd heard some stories in his merc days. Tales of mysterious disappearances of those who disappointed the illusive Niska. Jayne walked behind Zoe and in front of a henchman as they were led into the bowels of the station. The walls were sterile white and silver and left Jayne feeling exposed and out of place.

Niska himself was a little old man wearing a tailored suit. He spoke with an accent that Jayne hadn't heard before. It didn't quite sound like he was from a central planet, but it was also clear that he wasn't from a border moon. This man seemed to exist outside of normal time and space. The old man smiled serenely past his little round glasses as he paced slowly around his oddly furnished office. Brightly colored lamps, black sculptures, and soft rugs existed side by side with a bloodied corpse hanging from its feet.

The job described was simple enough, but Jayne had trouble paying attention. Niska smiled too much. It put them all on edge.

Jayne's part of the plan was to be the bird of prey, swooping down to snatch the goods. He didn't much like admitting to fear or anxiety but dropping out of a ship onto a train while both were moving at about 200 kilometers per hour did rile him a bit.

"Is there something I should be doing?," the doctor was saying to Kaylee as Jayne's nervous pacing brought him back to the cargo bay.

"You should be stayin' out'a everybody's way," he snapped at Simon.

Kaylee's voice was consoling and a bit scolding. "There's no call to be snappy, Jayne"

Jayne shook his head, his nerves getting the better of him. "Are either of you about to jump onto a movin' train?!" His voice was threatening to hit a whole new octave. He shook his head and found his center again. Stupid doctor, he had no reason to be down here in the first place. "Cap'n and Zoe off the ship leaves me in charge. And jus' cause Mal calls you medic don't make you part of this crew." Jayne stepped closer to Simon, so that he was now standing between the doctor and Kaylee. "You just play at figurin' out what's wrong with that moon-brained sister of yours till we call for you, _dong ma_?"

The doctor nodded awkwardly and murmured, "Right." To Jayne's relief the man turned and walked back toward the infirmary.

Kaylee watched Simon walk out of the cargo bay. "You shouldn't be so rude to him."

"Why? 'Cause he's all rich and fancible?" His nerves were still as raw as before, despite his success at getting Simon away from Kaylee.

"He's not rich anymore, the alliance crashed his accounts when he snuck out his sister." Kaylee handed Jayne the cable that would be his lifeline.

"Yeah, well, we could all be rich if we handed her back." Jayne muttered, hooking himself up to the ship's cable and yanking it to make sure it would hold. He didn't personally have anything against River. She was odd, for certain, but she was no threat to him. It was her brother that was causing all the trouble on the ship. Arguing with Mal and hedging in on Kaylee. Who did he think he was anyway?

Kaylee looked shocked and annoyed at his suggestion. "You're not even thinkin' that."

"Mal is," Jayne bluffed. Banter with Kaylee helped take his mind off of his almost certain death.

"That's not funny," Kaylee retorted.

"Naw, but he ain't stupid. Why would he take on trouble like those two if there's nothin' but risk in it for him, hm?" Kaylee tightened his harness from behind. Jayne turned around slowly and looked into Kaylee's eyes. She looked torn, she could see Jayne's point of view but she wanted to trust that Mal wouldn't send the Tams away.

"Time for some thrillin' heroics," Jayne said, forcing a grin. His heart leaped when Kaylee leaned in and gave him a peck on the lips which Jayne happily returned.

"Good luck," she whispered, and she opened the hatch.

As she lowered him down into the hole she knew that she shouldn't have done it, kissed him right there in the open. Secrecy was supposed to be a priority in their understanding. The most important thing right after no attachment. Kaylee shook her head. She wasn't getting attached. She just liked him is all. 'Sides, she liked Simon, too, and Inara! Hell, the way things were going there weren't hardly any warm body left on the ship that she wasn't getting attached to! Kaylee looked down through the hole and saw that Jayne was now inside the train car, the cable shook occasionally but he hadn't called to get pulled up yet so she waited. She glanced around the cargo bay to prove to herself that no one could possibly have witnessed the kiss. Her eyes fell on River. The girl was sprawled across the metal grating which made up a suspended walkway over the cargo hold.

"River, honey, how long you been there?" Kaylee called up to her.

"How can it be that time is measured the same in this precise location as it is in every unit of space spanning across an infinity of lightyears? Because it is not. False. Cassiopeia." River spoke airily. She rolled over on her back so that she was looking up at the gray metal ceiling, and she began pointing out foreign constellations to herself.

Kaylee's attention was drawn back to the train below when a shot rang out. Jayne's voice crackled in over her radio, "Pull me up! Get me out of here!" Someone grunted in pain but over the radio it was hard to tell who it was.

Kaylee retracted the cable and brought up the boxes and Jayne. "Is everyone alright? Where are the others? Are they still on the train? Is everybody ok?"

"They shot me in the gorram leg!" Jayne unhooked himself from the the crates.

With Kaylee's help (and persuasion) Jayne hobbled over to the infirmary where Simon was waiting. Jayne was pleased that his lecture earlier was taken to heart by the doctor. With Kaylee's hand resting possessively on Jayne's shoulder, he allowed Simon exactly five minutes to patch up his leg at which point Jayne began getting worried. " _Gorrammit_ , why ain't we movin'?" he shouted as he saw Wash stepping into the infirmary.

"I'm not, I'm not finished," the doctor stammered, as though Jayne's very presence frightened him.

Ignoring the doctor's worried voice Jayne continued. "Why you got us parked here? This ain't the rendezvous spot."

"It is now," Wash replied, his own anxiety working its way into his voice.

"Niska's people are waitin'! They're not partial to waitin'." Jayne said, trying to spell out the danger they were in as clearly as possible.

Wash shook his head angrily. "Let 'em read a magazine! We don't make the sale until Mal and Zoe are back."

Anxiety was overcome by anger. "These are stone killers, little man, they ain't cuddly like me." Jayne flinched slightly as Simon injected him with something. Painkillers most likely since it's seeming clear that he won't let the doctor finish the patch job.

"I'm not flying anywhere without my wife," Wash replied simply. His words made sense to Jayne. All he wanted to do, though, was to shout out that he was protecting all of them. If they didn't make the sale it wasn't just Mal and Zoe that'd be in danger, but every last one of them.

Kaylee spoke from behind Jayne, her hand was still on his back, a soothing reminder. "She'll be ok, she's with the captain."

"See?" Jayne said, hopping up from the stool. Pain shot up his leg, the bullet had torn part of his muscle, it must'a been worse than he thought because the pain killers weren't doing a thing. "Everybody wins."

Jayne grunted in pain as he wobbled on his feet. Simon grabbed another vial and injected him again, this one burned slightly.

"What about the authorities?" The doctor asked, putting away the second medication. "We're sitting here with stolen Alliance goods, won't they be looking for us?"

Wash shook his head. "If they buzz this canyon we'll hear 'em before they see us. We're good for a bit."

Suddenly River spoke, she had been sitting in the corner of the infirmary so silently that they'd forgotten she was there. "They won't stop. They'll never stop. They'll just keep coming till they take back what you took" She slowly raised her hands in front of her face. "Two by two… hands of blue."

Jayne's head was starting to feel funny. "How's about you shut that crazy mouth!" he shouted at River whose voice was spinning circles around him, "Is that a fun game?!" He wobbled on his feet for a moment before continuing. "Now. I'm in ruttin' charge here and I'm tellin' you how it works. We get the goods to Niska's men and then we come back and get Mal and Zoe. We don't get the goods to Niska on time he'll make meat pies outta the lot of us."

"Is this Adelai Niska you're talkin' about?" Shepherd Book spoke from the doorway of the infirmary.

Jayne turned his heavy head to face the shepherd. "Now, how does a preacher know a name like that?" He wondered to himself, not quite sure anymore if he was talking aloud or not.

"Seems like I heard he made a deal with the captain. If the captain's not there to finish it Niska may think that Mal's gonna rat him out. I think we're better off being a little late." Everyone seemed to like Shepherd's plan and Shepherd, Wash, and River filed out of the infirmary leaving just Jayne, Kaylee, and the doctor behind.

Jayne turned to Kaylee and whispered all to audibly, "I gotta protect you, Kaylee. Can't let Niska get near you. He's a bad man!"

Kaylee pat his arm as though he was a child. "Jayne, we're crooks. I think I know a thing or two about bad men."

Jayne shook his head. "No, we're crooks, but Niska… he's a monster. I gotta protect us." Jayne started hobbling out of the infirmary.

Simon looked over to Kaylee and whispered, "you should get to the cockpit, I'll try and slow him down."

Kaylee nodded and ran off ahead of Jayne whose limbs weren't obeying him as they should.

Simon appeared beside Jayne. "Your leg is still hurt, could I help you get up there?" Jayne shook his head vigorously and braced himself in the door frame.

"I ain't no invalid," Jayne slurred and continued his slow hobble up after Wash. Invalids get left on moons and never spoken about. The burn in his leg was getting more distant… but all of his limbs were also getting more distant. So was his forehead. And his ears?

Simon followed along behind Jayne at his halting pace. "What you said earlier," Simon started carefully, not wanting to anger the drugged man, "about protecting Kaylee? What did you mean? Why her?"

Jayne shrugged one shoulder as he slumped against the wall for a short rest. "Why should I tell you, doctor pussy foot?" Simon shook his head, he didn't really think the man would have told him anything anyway. However, to Simon's surprise Jayne continued. "Jus' cause I think I love her and she prolly loves me right back, but we ain't supposed to, ya know? It's a secret. Big gorram secret." Simon's eyes shot up toward his hairline. Of all the things he'd heard drugged patients say, none had been so shocking a revelation as this. "Doc'r?" Jayne continued, "when'd the ship get so hard to walk in?" Jayne shook his head and set off again toward the cockpit.

When they arrived Kaylee and Wash were already there. "You should sit down!" Simon called out from behind him.

"We can't just leave the cap'n and Zoe here," Kaylee said, as though explaining why it seemed like everyone was against him saving their skins.

"They ain't comin'. We can't just walk in and get 'em, so they're done for now. Let's fire it up!" Jayne said, his thoughts were becoming more disjointed the more frustrated he was getting.

Inara walked into the cockpit. "What's going on?" she asked.

"We're leaving," Jayne replied.

"We're not." Wash said firmly.

"Cap'n'd do the same if it were one of us." Jayne retorted.

"Would not!" Kaylee shot back

Jayne shook his head. "Do ya'll know what the chain of command is?! It's the chain I beat you with till you understand who's in ruttin' command here." Jayne glared at Wash, or at least he tried to. Wash seemed to not be standing still anymore, also he seemed to have learned how to float. "We're finishing this deal, and then maybe we'll come back for those morons… got themselves caught… can't change that by gettin' all… bendy." The people standing around him began to stretch and fade. He was back in space. 'Good,' he thought, 'at least we're flying. I'm gonna save all their stupid asses.' The stars around him were sparkling like angels.

"Did he just go crazy and fall asleep?" Wash inquired calmly.

"I told him to sit down," Simon replied, "I didn't feel comfortable with him in charge. I… I hope that's alright."

Kaylee put aside her concern for Jayne to focus on her concern for her captain and Zoe. The plan was made. Inara would walk in and walk out with their friends.

With Mal and Zoe back they were ready to finish the job, but Mal said no. They'd return the money and the stolen goods out of the goodness of heart. It made Kaylee feel warm and fuzzy, but made Jayne all sorts of uncomfortable. You don't just quit a job when you work for Niska.

Jayne tried telling Kaylee that as she helped him back to his bunk after the drugs wore off, but Kaylee wasn't listening. "Cap'n made it alright with his men, you missed that part because you were still half asleep." They stopped outside the hatch to his bunk.

"Kaylee, I don't think you understand. This isn't the end of him. I feel it."

She smiled and glanced around. Seeing the corridor was empty she stood on her toes and kissed him. Jayne closed his eyes and accepted the kiss. "How about my place tonight, that is if you're up for it?" she whispered conspiratorially.

Jayne looked down at his bandaged leg and back up at her sparkling hazel eyes. "I was shot, you know," he murmured against her lips as he leaned down and kissed her back.

"I know, I heard you were very heroic." Jayne grinned and tried to believe in her optimism. He pushed his thoughts about Niska to the back of his mind and limped after her toward the twinkling lights which adorned the hatch to her bunk.

I was a _chu sheng_ hero for a moment there, _niao_." Jayne murmured, "a big damn hero."


	4. Bushwhacked

((A/N: Wow! It looks like some folks are reading my fic! That's super exciting for me. I started writing this one back in 2010 and kept it all to myself for nearly a decade before deciding to finally get off my butt and finish it. I decided to start posting chapters here to motivate myself to finish the project. Now that it looks like a handful of people are actually reading this I have gone back and made a few edits to the first few chapters. They are no longer bold and weirdly formatted, for a start. I made a few changes to wording here and there, but no story changes. I'm still not used to the idea of publishing anything so I can't break my habit of eternally editing. Please enjoy chapter 4!))

Bushwacked

"You asleep?" Kaylee lay flush against Jayne, their bodies still clinging to the sweat from their brief but enjoyable _chao fan_. Jayne wrinkled his nose but didn't open his eyes. Kaylee grinned and rested her chin on her hands which were crossed over his chest. "I'm no good at CPR but I could try should you die from pleasure."

"Ya know," Jayne murmured, "my old blanket was quieter." He smirked and rolled over, depositing Kaylee onto the bunk beside him. Eyes still closed, he fumbled for his blanket.

"You wasn't listening to my story at all, were you?" Kaylee playfully prodded him in the cheek.

Jayne opened one eye and focused it blearily on the mechanic's face. "Sure I was. Happy childhood, fun and games, that one kid promised to show you his if you show'd him yours… happy kid stuff."

Shaking her head Kaylee leaned in and pressed a kiss to his lips. "Well, you got the gist, I guess." She snuggled in next to his body and rested her head against his pec, listening to his heart. Slow and steady beats like a distant drum. "Jayne?" A grunt came in response. "You've told me 'bout half a dozen heists and adventures... Why don't you ever talk about your childhood?"

Jayne lay quiet for several more slow even heartbeats. He took a deep breath, Kaylee listened to the air rushing in. It sounded magnified with her ear against his skin, like the breathing of a great beast instead of a man. "When I was five dad got mean, when I was ten my sister came along, when I was twelve my sister got sick, when I was fifteen dad stopped bein' mean 'round the same time he stopped breathin', and when I was sixteen I left home to start work. Sister's still sick, ma does what she can. I send money ev'ry time we land on a planet with a proper wirin' station. The end." He drew in another slow breath but didn't say anything more.

Kaylee looked at him, taking in his profile. "What's your sister's name?"

"Lana."

"Did you kill your dad?"

Jayne didn't flinch, his heartbeat did not rise. He didn't even open his eyes. "Yea."

Kaylee laid her head back down against his chest. "Did he deserve it?"

"Yea."

The two lay in silence for a while longer before Kaylee asked one last question. "What was your favorite thing to play before your sister was sick?"

It took thirty minutes to inflate Wash's ball with the hand pump that Kaylee fashioned out of scrap parts from the engine room, and it took Zoe, Mal, and Kaylee teetering together on unstable boxes to hook up the circular metal goal from a chain hanging from the ceiling of the cargo hold.

"Jayne!" Wash called out, "I'm open!"

"Little man!" Jayne shouted as he passed the ball to the pilot. Book knocked Wash's arm at the last moment and sent the shot off center, hitting the edge of the goal and sending it spinning. The whole crew was involved, either playing or watching. Even River was squatted on one of the suspended walkways, following the movement of the ball intently with her eyes wide and her mouth slightly agape.

The game went until the proximity alarm was set off. Wash bowed out of the game and went up to check on things. "Doc!" Kaylee called from her perch on Jayne's shoulders. Jayne crouched and let her slide down. "We're one man short if you want to play for our side."

Jayne grinned and said, "little Kaylee's always one man short." Kaylee punched him playfully in the arm.

"C'mon Doc, we won't bite!" Kaylee's smile wasn't something Simon could say no to. He conceded and made his way down the stairs to the game floor. Just then the ship shook.

"We hit somthin?" Zoe asked aloud and the crew all headed up toward the cockpit.

Mal was first to arrive. "You havin' a stroke up here, Wash?"

"Near enough," the pilot called back.

"What happened?" Zoe asked as the rest of the crew crowded in around the wall of windows. Outside there was a ship, slowly spinning in a perpetual dance of death.

"Can we tell if anybody's home?" Mal's arms were crossed and he seemed to be mulling over options in his mind.

"I can scan 'em but I'm gonna doubt it. We ran over one guy who was taking an ill prepared space walk," Wash replied gingerly.

"Tell ya what I think happened," Jayne stated, throwing himself down into the co-pilot's chair. "I figure that fella we run into did in everyone on board," he tilted his head sideways to make sure he had an audience. "Killed 'em all. Then he decided to take a swim and see how fast his blood could boil out his ears."

Wash slipped into his most sarcastic smile and replied, "You're a very up person, ya know that, Jayne?"

Jayne shrugged and stood up. Any second now Mal was going to announce that they were heading over to check for "survivors" but all that meant was look for money and goods. This was a old game, one he was very familiar with from his decade in mercenary work.

"Shouldn't we report this?" Book asked Mal.

The captain laughed. "To the Alliance? Ha, yeah, they'll run out here lickety-split and make sure these taxpayers are okay."

'Any second now,' Jayne thought.

"Then we'll have to!" Shepherd Book retorted. Jayne decided to count this as half a win to his predicting skills.

"Then how's about you say a prayer as we slide on by." Jayne raised his eyes to the shepherd. "There's no one on board, no one alive anyway. Otherwise there'd be a distress beacon."

"We'll check it out," Mal announced. 'Against all odds,' Jayne's mental commentary began, 'Jayne's prediction of events were entirely accurate!'

"Yeah, no, someone could be hurt." He smirked to himself and headed to the docking bay to get suited up and ready to go.

In the docking bay Jayne was surprised to see an intent looking Simon heading toward the doors. "Where'dya think you're goin'?" He asked, raising a hand to the doctor's chest.

"I thought I'd offer my services…" he stammered, "in case anyone on board required medical attention."

"Well, cap'n and Zoe are goin' in first. We'll holler if we need ya." Jayne said, clapping the nervous looking doctor on the shoulder. He looked even more nervous than usual. Jayne cocked his head and looked closer at Simon. "Somethin' wrong?"

Simon glanced away from Mal in his space suit to look at Jayne briefly before his eyes were dragged back to the captain. "Oh. No.. No, I well. I-I suppose it's just the thought of a little mylar and glass being the only thing separating a person from… nothing."

Jayne grinned. 'Ah, this boy is still not used to being in space,' he thought, 'poor kid.' If thoughts could laugh maniacally his would have. "Ya know, it's impressive what nothing can do to a body," Jayne said eerily, "like that feller we bumped into." Simon gulped audibly. "He's likely stuck up under our belly 'bout now. That's what space trash does, you know, just kinda latch onto any big som'thin that stops long enough." Jayne grinned and turned to walk away, but he stopped and looked back at the doctor. One last verbal dagger to throw. "Hey now, that'd be a bit like you and your sister, wouldn't it?" Jayne raised his eyebrows and cocked his gun as if a drumroll to his punchline. Unable to help grinning to himself, Jayne shook his head and strode off toward the row of suits, leaving the doctor standing alone, clutching his red bag.

"No one's on board, the ship's fully stocked. Emergency systems are running so no need for a suit." Zoe's voice came through on Jayne's radio.

"Got it, on my way." He replied. Before heading through the docking doors he had an idea. 'Joke's not done just yet.'

After a brief, but hilarious, joke on the doctor a little over half of Serenity's crew was exploring the derelict ship. The toys were bothersome to Jayne. He knew the lifeboat couldn't have held even a third of the people that it looked like were living on this ship. Maybe the kids got out alright. Their stupid parents Jayne didn't give a _guan wo pi shi_ about, as long as the kids got out before this special hell broke loose.

Jayne was rifling through the galley, packing up all of the unopened protein packets he could find. They were the basis of all of their meals and they were getting more expensive every year. "Damn inflation," he muttered. Not that he really knew what was causing the food prices to rise, but it seemed like a good enough word to blame it on. Suddenly he felt as though he was being watched. Jayne froze. His hand was exactly nineteen inches away from his holster. Slowly he turned and looked around the darkened kitchen area. The smell of old food filtered through the stagnant air and Jayne's eyes searched the shadows for the source of his discomfort.

"Aaargh!" Pain was shooting up his back. The lights in the galley flickered on for a moment and Jayne saw was looked like a man standing above him. Just then the lights went out again and a splitting pain filled his head. He raised his gun and fired in the general direction of the assailant, but the man was gone. His eyes stung from the trickle of blood from his hairline and he couldn't hear or see anything.

The next thing he knew Mal and Zoe were coming into the galley. "What did you see?" Mal asked urgently.

"I didn't, came at me from behind. He was big, though. Knocked me flat. I think I might'a hit 'im." Jayne tried to wipe the blood and sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand.

"You did," Simon said, pointing down at a trail of blood leading away from the galley and into an air vent.

Mal stepped over to the vent and removed the grate, from within they could hear a strained voice muttering, "no, no, no mercy," over and over again.

"Oh, we got lots of mercy," Mal whispered. The man seemed to calm down slightly, but then almost instantly became agitated again. Still in the same soothing whisper Mal repeated, "we're not gonna hurt you." Before the man could react to these words the captain's fist came down upon his temple and the man was out cold.

They pulled him out and carried the scrawny, unconscious man back to Serenity's med bay. "Yeah," Simon remarked to Jayne as they trooped back to their own ship, "he's a real beast, it's a wonder you survived."

"He looked bigger when I couldn't see him," Jayne muttered sheepishly back to the doctor.

While the doctor was working on the sole survivor Mal made the announcement.

"The ship was hit by Reavers."

Jayne shook his head. "No, no ruttin' way. It was that other guy, the one we hit in space. Went crazy an' killed the others. No way it was Reavers."

Kaylee butted in, "now just a second ago you said-"

"Don't matter what I said. It weren't Reavers. Reavers don't leave no survivors."

Mal drew his breaths in slowly. "Strictly speaking, wouldn't say they did."

Jayne's heart was now racing. "Ok, say you're right. If they was Reavers, why ain't we gone? Let's put this place to our rudder and get as far away as we can b'for they come back!"

"Job ain't done," Mal replied calmly. He sat down and sipped at his mug of coffee as casually as if they were discussing the weather.

"I ain't goin' over there with them bodies." Jayne's pulse was now dangerously fast, and yet it wasn't feeling as though blood was getting to his head. He gripped the back of a chair for balance.

"I'll go," the doctor's voice came from behind them. "Bodies don't worry me."

"I'd like to go with him. Maybe see what I can do about putting those folks to rest." Shepherd Book added, just as calmly as the rest.

Mal was never one for religion. Jayne shook his head, 'there's no ruttin' way cap'n would allow that,' he thought.

"Alright, you go say your words. Jayne you'll help the doctor and Shepherd Book cut down those people and then you'll load up the cargo." Mal said all of this without so much as looking up from the dregs of instant coffee swilling around in his mug.

"Wait… we're sittin' put for a funeral?" Jayne couldn't believe what was going on, he must have hit his head harder than he had thought.

"Yes, Jayne, that is exactly what we're gonna do." Mal stood up from the table and looked into Jayne's eyes for the first time since coming back from the dead vessel. "I ain't sain' there's any peace to be had, but on the off chance there is, those folks deserve a little of it."

Book, Simon, and a disgruntled Jayne all left for the dead ship. Kaylee smiled up at Mal. "That was real pretty, cap'n, what you just said there."

The captain reached out and cupped Kaylee's cheek in his hand. It felt warm and comforting. It took all of Kaylee's willpower not to close her eyes and lean into his touch.

"Kaylee, I got a job for you."

The screen flickered to life and showed what Kaylee had feared. Several vine-like arms had sprung up where Serenity had docked with the other ship and now held them in place with the risk of explosive bad times should they try to pull away.

"It looks like they jerry-rigged it with a pressure catch. It's the only thing that'd work with all these spare parts." Kaylee murmured, pointing at the screen. "We could prolly bypass that easy we get to the D.C. line."

Mal's eyes were serious as they locked with hers. "You tell me right now, little Kaylee, you really think you can do this?"

"Sure… yeah… well, I think so." Kaylee's confidence was waning. "'Sides," she laughed half heartedly, "if I mess up it's not like you'll be able to yell at me."

The captain, the pilot, and the soldier all looked at her. 'No pressure, then,' she thought as she nodded at them all before turning toward the hatch, 'no pressure at all.' She went straight to the engine room and collected any and all of her tools that might be of use in this endeavor and then made her way to the bowels of the ship, right below the docking bay.

"Don't mind me, girl," Kaylee murmured to the ship, "I'll get you free in no time."

Diving through the familiar wires and cables of Serenity's docking system, Kaylee started gently releasing them the foreign tentacles of Reaver tech which wound their way through Serenity's nerves. Like removing a tumor from a body Kaylee found the source of the problem and carefully killed it, snipping here and draining there she loosened the hold on the ship and was finally able to rid the ship of the cancer. "Got it!" Kaylee called up to Mal. She heard Wash whoop and give somebody a high five. "Told'ja I'd take care of you," she whispered to the ship as she climbed back out from Serenity's belly.

Just then Jayne came in through the dock doors with the goods. "What's going on in here?" he asked.

"Absolutely nothing," Mal replied with a smile. "Let's get those crates put away and put this place to our rudder."

Jayne glanced from Mal to Kaylee who was beaming with pride over something, but obliged and set to putting the crates in the stow space with the help of Book and Simon. Kaylee flashed him a smile, that made Jayne's stomach flip and send a wave of sensation through something a bit lower, before she brought her tools back up to the engine room.

As soon as the grate was placed back over the smuggling hole Jayne headed up to the engine room, taking the steps three at a time. He met Kaylee in the doorway. Placing his hands on either side of the metal doorframe he blocked her way. "So what was that all about?" he said in a low voice so that no one else in the open air corridor could overhear them.

"Well, I may have had some heroics of my own." Kaylee replied, a grin starting to spread across her face, "that's the sort of thing folks get rewarded for, right? Savin' lots of lives, helpin' us get rich without dying in the meantime."

She leaned in and placed a soft lipped kiss on Jaynes' bewildered face. "Wait, you gotta tell me more about this heroic stuff," he whispered into her neck. "Jus' so's I can figure out the proper reward."

For the second time in twelve hours the proximity alarm went off. Panic shot through Jayne's body. 'The Reavers are back.'

He ran into Mal as he made his way toward the helm. "Unload the goods, set them out right in front of the docking doors like we got nothin' to hide!" Mal ordered, not stopping to even look at Jayne.

"But we jus' got 'em stowed!"

"Un-stow them!" Mal shouted over his shoulder.

Doing as he was told Jayne hurriedly unloaded the goods and displayed them in front of the docking doors. Just as he was stepping away from the crates the captain came running down the steps to the cargo area.

"Good," he said, indicating the crates, turning he pointed to Simon, "now in a few minutes time this ship is gonna be crawling with Alliance. You go fetch your sister."

Simon looked appalled. "Why?" he shouted. "So you can display her in plain sight, too? What, Is this why you've let us stay? So that we could be your bargaining chips?!" His voice was raising in anger.

"Knew there was a reason," Jayne muttered.

"Don't be a fool, son," Shepherd interjected with his ever calming voice. "Do as the man says."

Just as Mal said, within five minutes the dock doors opened and no less than twenty armed Alliance soldiers flooded in, surrounding Serenity's crew. Bringing up the rear was a tall blond man. He wore a uniform but no armor, carried a gun but was not touching it.

"Is this your vessel?" the man asked briskly.

"Yes," Mal replied, "bought and paid for, I am Captain Malcolm Reynolds."

"And is this everyone... _Captain_?" the fed replied, spitting out the title like the word was foul in his mouth.

Mal was unfazed. "By way of crew, yes, however you will find in our infirmary a fellow we rescued off that derelict." Mal leaned charismatically toward one of the heavily armed soldiers standing near him. "Saved him, guess you could say." The blond fed nodded to two of his soldiers who set off into Serenity. Mal turned and shouted after them, "straight to the back, next to the common area!"

The fed pointed at the displayed crates. "And these items, I take it you rescued them, as well?" His voice betrayed the sneer that he managed to keep off of his face. "This looks to me like an illegal salvage operation." The fed continued.

"It does?" Mal said, feigning shock, "well that's discouraging!"

"You could lose your ship over these Alliance goods, Captain, however that is a wrist slap compared to the hell that will rain down on you if you are discovered harboring fugitives." Mal's face stayed still as stone. "A brother and a sister," the fed stated in an even tone, "when I search this vessel I won't find them, will I?"

Mal shook his head, "no children on my boat." His speech was smooth and relaxed.

"I didn't say children, Captain Reynolds, I said siblings, adult siblings."

"Oh, I misunderstood."

"Hmm," the fed started pacing around the cargo hold, "no chance they could have stowed away? I know how these older-model fireflies tend to have those troublesome little nooks. Smugglers and the like tend to prefer them just for that reason." A soldier returned and whispered to the fed. He turned around and spoke in an official sounding voice. "We will continue this conversation in a more official capacity." With that he strode off of the ship and back into the station. The soldiers rounded up the crew and marched them onto the station like cattle. Kaylee squeezed Jayne's hand briefly before they were all separated to be processed individually.

"I want every inch of this junker tossed!" the fed called out to his men somewhere ahead of them.

"Junker?!" Kaylee shouted back.

"Not now, Kaylee." Mal tried to mutter to her.

"But Cap'n, did you hear what that purple belly said about Serenity?!" the heat was rising in her cheeks.

"Kaylee, SHUT UP!" Mal scolded warningly back toward her as he was led down a separate hallway.

"Junker… _ni zai jian shen me pi hua_ ," Kaylee muttered menacingly at the solider marching next to her.

Kaylee's venting kept right on going until she was dragged into the interrogation room. Rather, it kept on going even in the interrogation room, the only difference was that now the blond fed was forced to listen to her.

"Six gerstlers crammed right under every cooling drive," she listed off all of the problems she could think of on her fingers, "so that you strain your primary artery function," her voice was raising in pitch now, "and you end up having to recycle secondary exhaust through a bypass system," she jabbed her finger toward the uncomfortable Alliance officer, "JUST so's you don't end up pumpin' it through the main atmo-feed and asphyxiating the entire crew!" Kaylee slouched back into her chair and glared at him. "Now THAT'S junk."

If Kaylee's rant made the officer uncomfortable it was nothing compared to the stare-down he had with Jayne. Every question the fed asked about the ship or the dozens of weapons which appeared to be stashed every few feet aboard the ship Jayne answered with icy silence and glaring until the fed let him go.

Back in the waiting area Jayne found Kaylee and the others who were finished with their interrogations. Kaylee looked worried. Jayne wanted to sit next to her and wrap a strong arm around her shoulders. He wanted to tell her that the captain's plan was fool proof. That the doctor and his crazy sister would be with them to meddle in their lives for a long time to come. Instead he settled down on a bench across from her. As he dropped himself into the seat loudly. Startled from her thoughts Kaylee looked up at him with wide eyes. Jayne's face twitched into half of a grin for just a fleeting second before turning to glare at the armed guard posted at the door. Glancing back at Kaylee he saw a flicker of relief pass through her face.

Back on the ship Mal relayed the story of finding the survivor on Serenity and saving the officer from the man who was half-Reaver already.

"You saved his gorram life, he still takes the cargo. _Whoon dahn_." Jayne grunts, shaking his head at the retreating Alliance station.

"He had to," Mal said softly from behind him, "couldn't let us profit. Jus' wouldn't be civilized." Mal shook his head and headed out of the helm.

Jayne stayed in the cockpit and watched through the wall of plexiglass as the Alliance station fired upon the derelict ship. Short bursts of light came from the still dancing vessel as the oxygen and other gasses burned up briefly before getting sucked out and dissipating in the void. Kaylee slipped up behind him and settled down to his left where his body blocked her hand from view of the others. She gently brushed his fingers with hers before she gripped the rail.

Looking over at the little mechanic as her face was briefly being lit up by different colors of explosions Jayne felt at peace. "Do you still feel heroic?" he whispered to her. Kaylee slowly shook her head, never taking her eyes off of the ship as its parts began separating and drifting off in different directions.

Jayne reached out and draped his left arm across her shoulders. "It's okay, _niao_ , I'm sure we can still find some reward for you."

She smiled at him. Looking past Jayne briefly she saw Wash and Zoe watching the derelict vessel as well. Wash looked away from the explosions and directly at the mechanic and the muscle. His face was unreadable but she seemed to see a small nod before he looked back out the window.

Or maybe she imagined it.


	5. Shindig Part 1

Shindig Part 1

Kaylee's eyes were closed. The light music coming from the speaker over her head was doing little to drown out her moans. She thrust her fingers deeper between her hot folds, her breath caught in her throat for a moment and she bit her lip. Images and flitted through her mind. The spicy smell of Inara's shuttle filled her for a moment as she imagined the companion's hands on Kaylee's skin. With the fingers of her left hand still stroking the wet nub which was swelling with excitement, her right hand slid slowly up her body. The gentle brush of her own fingertips on her stomach sent tingling sensations through her body.

Her nipples were already firm and raised when her hand reached the soft round hills of warm flesh. She pinched and rolled a nipple between her fingers and her mental image shifted. Now Jayne was holding her close to his body, their combined body heat was swirling together in passionate chaos. She imagined his hand, rough and purposed, caressing her breast. Her teeth were leaving indentations in her lip as she felt another wave of pleasure shimmer through her body. With her eyes still closed and the images still floating through her mind Kaylee's hand explored the mattress next her until her hand fell on her small vibrator.

If the music wasn't able to muffle her moans before, it was doing even less now. The soft buzzing started across her nipples. Kaylee's back arched as she involuntarily sucked in air. There didn't seem to be enough oxygen in her system. She slid the vibrator down her chest and down the soft skin of her stomach, she hovered for just a moment before plunging it down to meet with her hot, wet clit.

Simon now was in her imagination, a little taller and a little more muscular than the original. He was floating above her, his slightly too chiseled face drifted down toward hers, his long, toned arm was going down, down. Kaylee's core clenched and released quickly, her temperature rising steadily. Rhythmically she rocked her hips forward and back, against the pressure of the strong vibrations which were wracking through her body. "Aaah!" She couldn't contain herself anymore. The imagined Simon disappeared and was replaced with a void, a darkness which surrounded her like a blanket. She rode through her pleasure on an upward ride toward what was going to be a great climax.

"Kaylee, we're comin' in on Persephone. Meet us in the cargo hold with a list of parts we could use in five minutes."

Mal's voice cut through her concentration. It was gone. How was that possible?! She was right there, standing at the door about to walk through it and then in one second the whole scene is gone and replaced with the brightly decorated walls of her cabin.

"Got it, Cap'n," she managed to reply. She tried to push her frustration over being cheated out of a perfectly good orgasm out of her mind to allow room for her excitement over landing in Persephone. She always liked this planet. Lots of different people to watch and new smells and sights every time they landed. She pulled on her sleeveless jumpsuit and zipped it part way up, her skin was looking forward to some real sunshine. Pulling a notepad off of her desk she scribbled down a list of parts and approximate costs. She threw the notebook into her brightest yellow bag before heading up to meet Mal in the cargo bay.

Her face must have still been flushed from her previous excursions of that morning because as she passed Jayne his eyes seemed to linger on her just a little longer than usual. Noticing this made her feel a swirling heat return to her 'neathers. She quickly looked away before she made things even worse for herself. Her smile seemed to stretch her face wider than should have been possible as the loading dock doors opened up and the bright sunlight filtered in. The warm dusty air from outside swirled and mixed with the sterilized air of the ship creating dusty spirals curling before their eyes. Kaylee took a deep breath through her nose and set out off the ship first.

The rest of the crew, save for the Tams who never left the ship on these kinds of planets, and for Inara who had already left in her shuttle, fell into line marching along behind her as she set off into the ocean of people, sounds, smells, and sights. Shepherd nodded a goodbye to the rest of them and set off on his own to do whatever it is that Shepherds do ground-side. Kaylee waved to him briefly before turning away from the crowds and facing a row of storefronts.

"Look at all the pretties!" Kaylee squealed as they came upon the shops. Everywhere she looked there were beautiful women standing in windows, some were selling the dresses, others were selling the girls, everything she saw was mesmerizing.

"What am I looking at," Wash said from somewhere behind her, "the girls or the clothes?"

"The girls," Jayne said quietly, his eyes taking in Kaylee's backside.

"The clothes, please," Zoe said with a slight scolding tone, her eyes sparkled with a smile.

Kaylee ran up to a window, a girl stood on the other side of the glass in a long pink dress with layer after layer of crinkled ruffles, dancing in the light. "Ooh! Look at the fluffy one!" she called back to the crew. "The on'y place I seen something so nice is some of the things Inara has," she said with an almost reverent tone to her voice.

"We best be movin'" Mal muttered from the back of their group. The group largely ignored him.

"I guess she needs all that stuff, the life she leads." Zoe replied to Kaylee. Wash and Jayne were still squinting around at the clothes, or maybe the girls, in the windows.

"Well sure," Kaylee nodded, never tearing her eyes away from the dress. "Sometimes the customers buy her things. You know, some real rich men."

Mal's annoyance was evident in his voice as he urged them again, "Come on. These ain't feathers I'm totin' here, ya know." He shifted the goods from one shoulder to the other. They really weren't extremely heavy, but the conversation was grating on his nerves for some reason.

"I like the ruffles." Kaylee said, pointing unnecessarily to the rows after rows of pink frills. "Inara gets to wear whatever she wants -"

"What are you gonna do in that rig?" Mal snapped, "Walz around the engine room? Be like a sheep walkin' on its hind legs!"

Kaylee looked shocked and hurt. Jayne looked surprised. Wash looked as though a bomb was about to go off and he needed to get behind cover when it did. Zoe looked like the bomb.

"See you on the ship, Captain." The soldier said coolly as she took the goods from him and easily slung them over her shoulder. Zoe, Wash, and Kaylee turned and walked on to the mule, leaving Mal alone with Jayne in the dusty street. Jayne closed his eyes and swallowed, thinking about how he'd feel if Kaylee had looked daggers at him that way.

Badger approached Jayne and Mal as soon as the mule pulled away. Jayne sneered. "I smell a rat." He said to Mal.

The captain glanced up. "Badger, actually, but you were close. I had almost forgotten about the rodent infestation problem Persephone has."

Badger smiled and Jayne could almost smell the rancid thoughts milling around beneath his dirty little hat. "Would you come with me?" The cockney's pitiful attempt at politeness was visibly straining on him.

"I think we'll pass," Mal replied, almost cheerfully despite the unpleasant company. This seemed to be a specialty of the captain's.

Badger's face slipped into a more menacing smile, it was a more natural look for his face. "Oh I'm sorry, did I imply that I was asking?" The muscle behind the little man glared down at Mal and Jayne who then exchanged a pair of looks that spoke volumes. They agreed to go.

In the badger's hole, Jayne and Mal were seated at a table which was daintily set for tea. Badger poured some brown liquid into their teacups, but offered no further explanation for bringing them in.

"Why are we here, Badger?" Mal asked as Jayne picked up his teacup and sniffed the liquid.

"Do two fine bus'ness men like ourselves need so many reasons to have a little palaver, Captain Reynolds?" Badger made an offended face which dripped with sarcasm.

"Seems to me the last time there was a chance for a little palaver we were all manner of unwelcome." Mal didn't touch his cup, instead he kept his eyes trained on their host. Jayne, not smelling any known poisons, took a small sip of the brown beverage.

"Hm, ain't bad." He muttered.

"The trick is wood alcohol." Badger replied, ignoring Mal's questions.

"So now we're favored guests…" Mal continued, "treated to the finest in beverages that make you blind." Jayne shrugged and took another sip. "So what is it you need?" The captain looked straight at Badger who was busying himself by putting a plate of triangularly cut finger sandwiches on the table.

Taking his time so as to make perfectly clear that Mal was not rushing him into giving anything up Badger sat and adjusted himself at the table with them. He poured himself a cup of wood alcohol but did not touch it.

"There's a local," he said at length, "by the name of Warrick Harrow. Got some property he wants to sell off-planet. Fetch a high price." He leaned in as though keeping this news a secret from the teeming masses of other Persephone scum.

Mal looked bored but Jayne recognized his mask, the captain was intrigued. "So the local powers won't let him sell off-world, and he needs a smuggler. Why us? You have access to ships, you could do it yourself."

Now it was Badger's turn to look bored, but his mask wasn't good enough to hide his evident aggravation. "Won't deal with me direct. He's takin' an irrational dislike."

"Wha' happ'nd," Jayne said, his speech muffled by the three finger sandwiches currently in his mouth, "did 'ee see your face?"

Mal caught his smirk just in time and slid it behind his bored mask. Badger flashed Jayne his most menacing glare, but without his muscle standing behind him it was rather useless. "He's a quali'y gent." Badger continued, "nose in the air like he never _quan gua pi_. Don't find me respectable. But you, you I figure, got a chance."

Mal's smile was polite, almost serene, but his voice was firm. "You backed out of a deal last time, left us hangin'."

"Hurt our feelin's," Jayne interjected.

"You recall why that took place?" Mal's eyes drilled into Badger. Jayne was glad to not be sitting in the scumbag's seat. Glad for more than just the usual laundry list of reasons.

"Had a problem with your attitude is why!" Badger shot back, "Felt you was… what's the word."

"Pretentious?" Jayne offered. Mal's eyes left Badger for the first time since entering the rodent's hole and turned to marvel at Jayne for a moment before turning back to Badger.

"Precisely! You think you're be'er than other people."

"Just the ones I'm better than." Mal adjusted in his seat and leaned in toward Badger. "Now I'm thinkin' that very quality is the one you're placing value on today."

Kaylee sat in the back of the mule. The sun was shining down warmly on her but she wasn't enjoying it anymore. She was miserable. The kind of unhappy that left a body with nowhere left to even wish they were. She rode along for the dropping of the goods. They were for some store owner who had ordered questionable materials from an off-world manufacturer and had arranged to receive small amounts at a time, each small shipment coming in from a different smuggler as to stay under the radar. It was an easy job, but unfortunately it was a one-time only gig. If only good paying jobs were always so simple. Pick up goods from A, deliver to B, get paid by B, repeat.

Kaylee handed her list of parts to Zoe. The second-in-command looked the list over and scratched out the two most expensive parts.  
"Zoe, we need those!"

Zoe looked honestly apologetic, "I'm sorry, honey. We don't have the money. Can you keep Serenity flyin' with just these?"

Kaylee looked at the modified list. She could feel a tantrum bubbling not far below her surface. She nodded and snatched the list back from Zoe. As she hopped off the back of the mule she felt a little bad. It wasn't Zoe's fault, she was just following Mal's directions. Being broke came with the territory of flying, these days. Unless a ship was chartered or worked for the Alliance the money was only as good as the jobs, and the good jobs were few and far between. She jammed the list back into her yellow bag as she headed through the dusty crowds toward the junkyard to pick out the best of the worst, or if they were lucky the worst of the best, of the parts she could fix up and stick into Serenity.  
_

Back in her engine room Kaylee was almost back in a pleasant mood. Her new toys were scattered about the metal grating of the floor waiting to be lovingly installed into their new homes. The old parts making sad sounds of exhaustion were waiting patiently to be replaced. The average ear would probably not pick up on these sounds, but Kaylee heard every whisper. Reaching past the compression coil she whispered to the part, "I'm sorry, friend, you'll just have to keep trucking for a lit'l bit longer. I'll fix ya up good real soon."

"Got a job for ya." Mal's voice broke her concentration for the second time that day. Glancing over toward the door she glared at the captain.

"I already have a job I'm doin' best I can," she snapped at him, "also I ain't talkin' to you." She turned pointedly away from him and picked up another best-of-the-worst part.

"Leave it for later, this one's 'portant." Mal dropped something just within the doorway of the engine room. Kaylee's cheeks burned with anger.

'The nerve that man has!' She thought angrily, 'first he cheats me out of a perfectly good orgasm, then he insults me in front of my friends, tells me we can't get the gorram parts we need, and now won't even let me alone to do my _cao gan_ job?!' Pulling herself up to a stand she threw the wrench in her hand at her tool box, the loud clatter of metal on metal punctuating her frustrations. Looking over toward the doorway her eyes fell on a large white box, too clean to have been on the ship for any length of time. Curiosity began edging its way slowly in front of her frustration. Wiping her hands off on her jumpsuit she knelt down and opened the box.

Kaylee was standing in Inara's room looking at her reflection in the largest mirror on the ship. The dress was flowing down from it's shoulders from a narrow metal hanger hooked over the top of the tall mirror. The gown's brightly colored ruffles hanging limply down. Kaylee wasn't sure what was wrong. The dress in the window had a broad circular skirt, held out and away from the model's legs. Kaylee shook her head slightly, it was still the most beautiful dress Kaylee had ever touched. The mechanic looked down at her body. She was stripped down to her panties and bra, the engine grease was still visible up to her elbows, making out the pseudo tan line betraying her profession. Kaylee bit her lip. Cap'n said be down in the loading bay in 30 minutes… didn't the man know _anything_ about prettifying?

She glanced around Inara's shuttle and her eyes fell on the companion's bathing basin. Kneeling on the red and gold satin pillow before the basin, Kaylee reached out and pressed one of the small knobs on the side of the bowl. Warm water began to fill the basin. Smiling she pressed a second knob. The water began to smell of flowers and spices that Kaylee had no words to describe. Soon the basin automatically stopped filling and Kaylee was leaning forward breathing in the fragrant steam. She quickly found a cleansing cloth and set to work washing her arms and face. Everything was so luxurious, even the water felt soft and seductive as it ran over her skin. Once the grease smudges and thick dirt under her fingernails were all gone Kaylee removed her bra and picked up the soft sponge she had seen Inara using. Holding it close, Kaylee breathed in the familiar scent of Inara's skin. It wasn't strong like a perfume, more like a subtle spice that becomes so familiar it is almost indistinguishable. Kaylee carefully dipped the sponge into the quickly cooling water and drew it from her fingertips up to her shoulder, soft lines of sweet smelling water trickled down her skin. Squeezing the sponge gently she caressed her collar bone and chest, lukewarm water making its way in rivulets down over her breasts and stomach. Every breath felt like Inara was sitting behind her, the soft sponge like her gentle touch, caressing Kaylee's skin and making her feel beautiful and perfect, an easel for the companion's art. Dipping the sponge into the basin a second time she repeated the motions on the other side. She had just started running water over the back of her neck and down her aching back when she heard a knock at the door.

"I'm not ready yet, Cap'n!" she called, "And how'd you know I was in here anyhow?"  
There was silence for a moment and then a low voice answered from inside the room, "Wash told me about Mal's plan, and... well, I looked everywhere else first."

Kaylee hadn't heard the door open, and startling at the voice she quickly wrapped her arms over her chest and snapped her head around toward the speaker. Jayne was standing almost sheepishly by the door, his eyes scanning the unfamiliar room for a brief moment before settling back on Kaylee's form. Her back was to him, he could see the knotted muscles of her shoulders and upper back slowly release as she recognized him.

"Oh, I thought you were the Cap'n," she said as she turned back to the basin, allowing herself to slip back into her relaxed mindset. Jayne stayed by the door as she finished washing herself, the final lines of water finding their way down her pale back. She retrieved a dry cloth from beside the basin and stood, her back still to the door and Jayne, and began to dry herself. Aware of her audience she cast a glance over her shoulder. "Could you help me dry my back?"

Jayne inclined his head silently and walked toward the mechanic. She handed him the cloth and turned away from him. Gently he ran his hand over her back, goosebumps were just beginning to rise on her soft skin. His calloused palm against her back woke up all of the senses that had been lulled to sleep during her short bath. Jayne drew the cloth over her shoulders and down her back, leaning in closely he nuzzled the side of her neck.

Jayne's tender actions no longer caught Kaylee off guard. In a way they were soothing to her. It wasn't what she had originally intended when planning the agreement with the ship's new muscle, but in many ways it was just as much a physical need as the sex was.

Kaylee leaned back against Jayne's chest, his big arms snaking carefully around her. She expected him to start kissing or gently tweaking her raised nipples, but instead he just held her for a moment and then released her. "You got a party to get ready for."

Kaylee nodded and stepped over toward the mirror where the ruffled dress hung. She analyzed it for a moment before lifting up the ruffled skirts and diving in from the bottom. Jayne looked on, bewildered. Not that he had much experience with outfits like that, beyond getting women out of them, but it didn't look quite right. Soon enough Kaylee was retreating from her original plan of attack.

"Can't'cha go in from the top?" Jayne ventured.

"No, I can't fit through the neck hole and there ain't no zipper or buttons that I could see." Kaylee's cheeks were slightly flushed.

Jayne stepped forward and turned the dress over so the back was toward him. Carefully he began feeling around the frilly fabric until he found what he was looking for. "A lotta these real fancy _zhexie_ have a hidden release. I guess it's not stylish to have a visible clasp anymore. I never saw the prob'em with 'em, though, easier to see means easier to take off." Kaylee rolled her eyes at him.

"Well at least it's a tribute to your charm that you've seduced fine enough women to have these kinds'a clothes," she teased, stepping in through the now open top of the dress.

"Who said I've seduced them?" Jayne said with mock indignation, "I can't barely keep the ladies off me!" Kaylee shimmied herself slightly and brought the dress up around her shoulders. "I should tell you about this one girl," Jayne said quietly as he closed up the back of her dress, "she confronted me the day I came aboard the ship."

Kaylee looked up at Jayne's reflection in the mirror, his head dipped down to just over her shoulder. "How'd things turn out with her?"

Jayne's hands slid down to her hips and slowly encircled her waist. "Well… there was one thing I've been meanin' to tell her," he leaned in close, 'I think I love her,' come on Jayne, just say it, now's your chance, just say 'I-love-her!'

As he leaned closer his belt buckle found a second hidden spot just at the base of the back, above the skirt, and the two were forced apart as several automated hoops aligned and formed themselves into the multiple rings creating a halo about her legs.

"You did it!" Kaylee squealed excitedly, focusing her attention back on her reflection. Stepping over to the side of the mirror she slipped on the shoes that Mal had gotten her also and spun around for Jayne to see. "What do you think?" Jayne's face looked dejected, almost even disappointed. "What's wrong?" Kaylee asked, turning and looking at the mirror again, "am I missing something?"

Jayne shook his head. "Nah, it's just… it's different. You look like someone else… kinda… I mean you still look good... but... just a diff'rent from before."

Annoyance trickled back into Kaylee's mind. "What? Why can't I be pretty and still be me?" Her tone came out more aggressive than even she expected, but hearing the words aloud gave voice to a wave of other insecurities. "Is that a right reserved for ladies like Inara? Or.. or those other fancy dressed ladies you got out of their dresses? Don't I deserve to feel fancy, too? Am I not good enough? You're no better than the Captain." Turning on her heel Kaylee stormed toward the door to the shuttle leaving Jayne tongue-tied and confused.


	6. Shindig Part 2

Shindig Part 2

These were Wash's favorite times. They were parked on a planet with enough going on to keep the rest of the crew occupied and off his bridge. The constant hum of the engines was quiet for once and the weight of real gravity pulled at him and made him feel solid. Sure, too long in port and he started going land-crazy, but after a good long stretch of being on the move he did start to miss it. Most importantly, though, Mal was gone and Zoe was here. Zoe: his bride, his warrior woman, his love, his everything.  
There were more than a few days when Wash questioned how high _his_ thoughts and feelings were on Zoe's priority list. He used humor to diffuse tension, but most of the time it was his detachment from the crew and their captain which got him through the hard days. They didn't owe him anything and he didn't owe them anything. He was their pilot. He liked that about being a pilot. He was always one apart from the rest of the crew. At the end of the day he was the one to decided whether or not the ship moved (not that he often felt the need to pull that move). He didn't depend on the crew for anything. He was here for Zoe. And Zoe was here for Mal. Therefore he wasn't going anywhere.

"Gravity feels good," he murmured into his wife's hair. Her disheveled curls covered her pillow and half of his. He buried his face into her soft hair and nuzzled her neck.  
"Mmmm." Zoe agreed sleepily.

Wash wasn't sure she heard him but didn't much care at this moment. They lay together in their quarters, the largest on the ship. Normally the captain would fill this space on a ship, but Mal gifted it to them upon Zoe's firm announcement that they were a couple and would be married. Wash was surprised that Mal would give up his quarters for them. Mal hadn't seemed to like his new pilot all that much, but he and Zoe always had a silent understanding which left little need for discussion. So Mal moved out and Wash and Zoe moved in.  
It was still tiny. Nothing more than a metal room with a bare bed and an empty closet, but in the very moment when Wash crossed the threshold with his bride-to-be, it suddenly was so much more. It was an oasis. It was their space. They weren't soldiers or pilots or mercenaries or pirates or thieves in this room. They were two people in love. Two people who were happy and in love. Two people who were angry or frustrated or tired or horny or bored... and in love. They were a regular married couple, not just part of a crazy and dysfunctional crew.

"I think moons make the bed feel better." Zoe suddenly said. Wash opened his eyes again. Zoe glanced over, her eyelids barely lifting to expose her beautiful brown eyes. Her lips twitched into a little grin. "Planets make the bed too hard to get out of."  
Wash smiled and rolled over his wife, sliding between her warm skin and the sheet. His body fit against and around hers so perfectly.  
"You see," he began, placing his arms on either side of hers, "it's all part of my elaborate plan to keep you in this bed. The gravity is just the first step. Next step is ingratiating ourselves with the locals. Soon the pillows will accept us as one of them and we'll be forced to keep up the ruse lest we be discovered as the interlopers we are!"

* * *

"Kaywinnit Lee Frye and escort"

Inara's head snapped around to look toward the entrance. Atherton was visibly miffed at suddenly no longer being at his rightful place at the center of her attention.  
"Kaylee?" Inara said quietly.  
"Someone you know?" Atherton Wing said dryly. Years of diplomacy training just barely keeping the whine at bay. It was as though she was intentionally avoiding his proposal. This was probably part of some ploy. Everything was with these sort of women. 'Never say a yes or a no when you can smile and keep your options open' sort of women.  
"Oh _goushi_ "  
A hot feeling of anxiety crept into his belly. Inara was walking away from him! No. This would not do. He hopped into a pace to match Inara's own and slid his hand possessively into hers. He resisted the urge to snap it backwards, stopping the woman short and reminding her of the arrangement.

* * *

Kaylee looked around the room, her eyes widened as though they could take in more information if only they could grow large enough. Everything was amazing. The lights, the music, the people, everything was a work of art in this room! Her eyes were sliding from one dazzling person to the next. She could even smell them as they come near, some were spicy, some sweet, some tickled her nose. Not a single one smelled like they were waist deep in an engine an hour ago. Suddenly nervous she bobbed her head and took a subtle sniff. Nope, she still smelled like… "Inara?!"  
Inara and one of her customers were coming toward her. "Oh look, cap!" She said, pointing. Mal seemed less surprised. Kaylee wasn't sure why she was. Of course Inara was here. Just look at the room! It looks like it was built and this whole party put on just so Inara could float through the crowd like an angel.  
Some terse words were exchanged before Inara and her rich customer went one way and Cap and Kaylee went another. The captain immediately was on task, looking for the man they were supposed to be meeting in order to line up some more crime. But crime was everyday. This was a party! Kaylee interrupted Mal's search plan, "we'll find him quicker if we split up, cap'n." She nodded at him with wide eyes she hoped portrayed innocent interest in whatever it was he was blathering on about.  
"Don't make yourself sick," Mal said, with an air of an uncle giving up on his plans to watch the children closely. "Ah, go have fun," he smiled in spite of himself as she beamed and dipped into an overly dramatic curtsy.

Kaylee set off around the dance floor, being careful to not step too closely toward the lines of dancers moving about in planned steps. Moving their arms and legs in patterns which were both beautiful and mysterious. Kaylee knew some dances from back home. Her hometown was on a rather stable moon. They weren't too far from the central planets, but they were far enough to make their big-city ways seem dramatic and ever so exciting. Back home dances were done in low lights. There would be drinking and laughing and shouting involved. The dress code was dirty and the center was often a bonfire, not a floating chandelier. At those dances Kaylee knew the steps and wouldn't hesitate to jump in. In the low light it didn't matter if you stepped wrong or if your face was dirty. 'This shindig is like one of those parties grew up! Those were fun, but _zhe geng hao_ ,' she thought looking around. 'I've grown up, too.'

The music shifted and the group of dancers dispersed and reorganized themselves into couples. Kaylee squared her shoulders and stepped up to a handsomely dressed man near a pillar. He was standing with his white gloved hands folded gracefully together at his waist. She curtsied before him and said, " _Ni yao bu yao gen wo tiaowu_?" The gentleman looked at her with a puzzled expression.

Before Kaylee could fully comprehend this reaction Inara was next to her, "I'd love to dance, thank you."

The next moment was one of exhilaration and joy. Kaylee and Inara spun together with the music, arms clasped in a formal dancing position. It was nothing like the dances back home. Inara led and Kaylee was happy to flow where she guided. She felt more graceful than she could have ever anticipated.

"That young man was a waiter," Inara said quietly with a small smile. "He's working at this party. That's why he was confused when you asked him to dance."

Kaylee looked back at the man and saw that he was now clearing empty shimmer wine glasses from a nearby table. "Wow, but he's in a suit!" Once these words were past her lips she felt her cheeks grow warm. "But… I guess e'eryone here is, though."

Inara had the ability to put people at ease before they even realized they needed to be put at ease. "Even our dear Captain Malcolm Reynolds is in a suit. Was that your doing, Ms Frye?"

Kaylee laughed. "No! Apparen'ly he's just had it in the back of his closet for years! It's a little bit small on him. Did you see how tight the pants were?"

Inara nodded and the laughter filled her eyes. She had such perfect eyes. Kaylee could not place just how Inara's eyes and laugh were making her feel just now. She was happy, certainly. Inara was beautiful, as always, but there was something about being the center of her attention for these wonderful moments that was filling Kaylee with so much comfort and confidence. This must be some of what her customers paid for. It was obviously not just the sex. It didn't take too many partners to teach a body that sex is just sex. There ain't a specific body measurement or ratio to magically make sex any more than it is. What Inara's customers wanted was this feeling. And right now it was all for Kaylee.

The music shifted seamlessly again and Inara slid her arm smoothly around Kaylee's and gently led her away from the dancing couples and toward the hors d'oeuvres. She moved with such confidence. Kaylee watched as though she was analyzing a moving part in a motorized unit. The tilt of her head as she greeted person after person, all of whom she knew their names and some special piece of information. Then, the angle of her smile and she accepted two glasses of shimmer wine from the smartly dressed waiter. Kaylee was surprised when suddenly Inara's attention was back on her. A cool glass was suddenly in her hand and Inara's eyes were locked on hers intently.

"You're under cover?" The question was phrased like a statement, but Kaylee answered anyway. She explained the captain's plan.

"But really I'm just here for the party." Kaylee tilted her head like she saw Inara do. "People assume that I wouldn't like or do these types of things cuz I don't usually." Her neck was starting to twinge as her muscles tensed into the forcefully-graceful position. "But I definitely do. These are definitely my people and I can definitely fit in here. At his party. This party that I am definitely fitting in at."

Inara smiled at Kaylee, just for her. Kaylee saw her real smile, not the companion's face. Her eyes flicked back to Atherton, and he was glaring at her from across the room. She smiled her companion smile and nodded at him. "I'm sure you will do splendidly, my dear Kaylee. I need to get back to work." She gave Kaylee's arm a gentle squeeze. "Mustn't forget I'm on the clock. Bye _bao bei_." She turned her head back toward Kaylee just a fraction and dropped one painted eyelid into a conspiratorial wink before floating back across the crowded room to rejoin her customer. He seemed to be speaking quickly and with irritation, but Inara smiled and stroked his arm. The tension seemed to melt away under her light touch.

Kaylee took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. "Alright, I'm gonna mingle." She said aloud under her breath. She took a sip of her shimmer wine and looked around. The hors d'oeuvres table was draped decadently in all sorts of foods, most of which Kaylee didn't recognize right away. Her eyes locked onto the strawberries like a heat-seeking torpedo. "But first I'm gonna mingle with you."

* * *

Jayne peered over his cards at the preacher and the doctor. Glancing back and forth between the two before selecting and laying his bet. The married ones were enjoying their shore leave in the best way. Captain and Inara and Kaylee were off doing jobs. That left Jayne with Book and the siblings. He didn't have a problem with the preacher, not in the way Mal did anyway. He was a good 'nough man to spend time with. Even helped Jayne build his gym and could lift his share of heavy things. In the most basic male pecking order that ability put Book in pretty good standing. The doctor couldn't lift anything. The simpering scared-o-his-shadow persona Simon portrayed around Jayne was irksome but it was starting to feel like a facade. A few months back when Simon drugged him to keep him from completing their job was one of the few times the doctor showed a backbone. At the time Jayne wanted to murder him, but Kaylee had soothed his rage by pointing out that everything had worked out in the end. In hindsight, the simple act of _doing something_ did more to make Jayne start taking him seriously than all of Simon's fancy words ever did.  
"Garbage," he grunted. Moon-brain was wandering around the kitchen like she was listening for something. The doc was playing dealer for Book and him. After a bit, the girl started jabbering and tearing the labels off of food. Doc and Book abandoned the game to tend to her. Simon's attentiveness irked him in an old way. It was too much like how Jayne's mother would run after Lana whenever his sister tried to do anything of her own mind. 'Keepin' her safe' was always the words on their ma's lips… but how safe were any of 'em until Jayne removed the problem?  
Same here with the doctor and his sister. Neither of them were safe, and they wouldn't be… not until the problem was removed. But their problem was just too big. You can't outrun the whole Alliance forever. Sure, if you're just a little ship with some gray to black jobs on its record it's not too hard to keep just out of reach, but they seemed to want Moon-brain an awful lot. Their problem was putting them all at risk. Jayne removed his sister's problem because he loved her. He took care of the people he loved or the people he was paid to take care of. These city kids were neither.  
The game was obviously abandoned. Jayne rearranged the bets in his favor and made his way out of the kitchen.

* * *

River was asleep. Simon found himself aching for his own bed in these moments, but there was too much to do. He slid the door closed quietly and stepped back out toward the infirmary. Once inside he closed the door and let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. This was the only space on this ship that was his. The harsh white light bounced off the sterile walls and assaulted his eyes with a familiar sting until they adjusted. It was so different in here from the rest of the ship. Serenity, with her dark browns and smells of rust and oil. Nothing out there was ever totally clean. It was always just a touch too warm and a touch too dark. The rest of the crew seemed to find that homey, but for Simon it was just enough to put him on edge.  
The warmth was growing _shui_ -knows-what bacterium which was waiting to be spread through the ship's ventilation systems. The darkness was hiding _shui_ -knows-what assailants ready to jump out at him when he walked by. It almost always felt like there were eyes watching him from the dark corners of the ship. Sometimes the unknown was suffocating. The what-ifs piled up so quickly and he couldn't breathe. His heart would be beating just too fast and his thoughts would spiral. He was about to die and then who would look after River? _River_. River! And then the moment would pass. _River_. And his heart was again beating at a normal rhythm. _River_. How could he help River if his anxiety was getting the better of him?  
It was always better in his infirmary. It was clean and bright. It reminded him of a small piece of one of the large central planet hospitals where he and his med-school brethren completed their residencies. A very small piece. A very small and understocked piece. Simon shook his head and went to the locked cupboard where he kept his small collection of medical texts. They were stored in a variety of formats, depending on how and when he'd been able to get a hold of them. Most were on microdiscs which he could load up on his viewer, but some of the rarer texts were on dedicated tablets or data pads. He flipped through the pads and located the one he was looking for. Holding the pad in one had and guiding through his notes on his viewer with the other he settled in for a few hours of research.

At a few different times in his previous life he had tried out different treatments for anxiety. Sometimes medication helped keep the toxic thoughts at bay, other times talk therapy had been recommended. The first time he remembered the pressures of his every-day life becoming too much to bear was when he was in grade-school. When he was young other children bullied him sometimes. They would tease him for being smart, or being good, or being quiet. And he never understood why, he was just following directions. Why would his teachers direct him to do something if it wasn't what he was supposed to be doing? The other children's words dug into him and made him wonder what he was doing wrong. He remembered crying to his mother one day after school.  
"Why don't they tell me what I'm supposed to do?" She didn't understand what he meant, she asked him if he was having trouble following the teachers' instructions. "No, not the teachers, the kids! They don't mean what they say, you're supposed to just know what they mean. I do what the teachers say and they act like it's wrong, but then the teachers act like it's right and I don't know what to do!"  
His mother hugged him and said that children are mean sometimes, but to just do what the person in charge says and he'll be alright. School was easy after that. He just ignored the other children and got top marks. Eventually he was moved out of that school and into another, more advanced school. Every few years this would happen, his parents were so proud and Simon would feel relieved for another fresh start.

During medical school he found himself struggling with classes for the first time in his life. It was a good feeling, though. It was exciting to be challenged. The other students no longer teased him for being smart. He even found himself, quite by accident, being part of a social group. Social interaction was one outlet for his anxieties that he had never tried before. His friends seemed to enjoy his company despite (and at times it seemed, because of) his personality. They never judged him for his anxiety, and instead shared his feelings, or gave him shoulders to cry on, and trusted friends to express his fears to. This was a foreign, but welcome, experience. They moved through medical school as a unit. Studying together, eating together, relaxing together. After one particularly trying exam, one of Simon's friends, a young man name Belor with a skill in charisma that Simon never could have hoped to emulate, suggested they all go out to a bar to blow off some steam.

That night, he and his friends drank too much, danced very badly, and then started plotting to get Simon a date. Belor identified a target. A woman with too many angles and a painted-on face sitting at the bar. Belor went to her first and after a brief exchange and a smooth introduction by his friend, Simon found himself chatting with this woman. She was doing the majority of the talking and Simon was just nodding a lot and trying to keep the queasy churning feeling in the pit of his stomach at bay. He shouldn't have had those last few drinks.  
The woman's voice was husky from chem use and her cheekbones looked artificially sharp, but Simon had to admit she was the most attractive woman who had ever shown an interest in him by the virtue of being the only woman. Sometimes his friends had insisted other girls had been trying to catch his eye but he never seemed to be able to tell until they had already given up and moved on. There was also the nagging voice in his head which pointed out the likelihood that they were only saying it to try and tease him. The woman, whose name was Yaz, ("Like YES!" she croaked suggestively in his ear) started kissing him. He didn't much like the taste of her mouth… or possibly it was his mouth that he didn't like the taste of. Why had he had so many drinks? There was a blurry few hours and the dark bar setting became a dark street setting and then Belor was opening the door to a hotel room and winking as he closed it behind Simon. Simon looked around the room in a drunken haze. His mind half-formed a laundry list of concerns. The stains on the floor, the smell, the peeling wallpaper, the discolored lampshade diffusing the light unevenly around the dingy room. Yaz led him to the bed and asked him to lay down. She seemed to be the authority in this situation so he followed her directions.  
She undid his pants and then looked up at him, "You doin' okay, honey?"  
Simon did a brief self-evaluation. It appeared that they were about to have sex. He was up-to-date on all of his inoculations. He wasn't opposed to the idea of sex, though he had never done it before now. He was 19 years old which was an appropriate time to initiate in the activity. Yaz seemed to know what she was doing vis-a-vis the sex activity so this wasn't a bad time to start. He had to admit he was curious about how it would go. He had masturbated before, of course, and he had watched pornographic holo-vids periodically, though they didn't really cause much internal disruption of his equilibrium. There was something about Yaz's painted face being close to his crotch that was starting to do just that, however. Through the drunken haze he was starting to feel his lower belly grow warm. "Yeah," Simon said, "I'm ok with this."  
She finished opening his pants in time for Simon to see the front of his underwear start to bulge. With skilled hands Yaz slipped his underpants down to just below his butt. His erection was still in its beginning stages, but her cool fingers brushed against his hot skin and drew it the rest of the way out. Simon closed his eyes to shut out the dirty room and focused on what he felt. Yaz was kissing his neck. He could smell her spicy perfume. He opened his eyes when Yaz took his hand and guided it to her breast. In the moments his eyes were closed she had slipped her shirt off, she was just wearing her skirt. She was on her knees next to him and had her hand on his as she slid it up and over the just-too firm mound of her breast. His anatomical mind made a brief note that the slight sag of her skin didn't quite match the firm spherical nature of her breasts, but this thought slid away quickly as her breasts suddenly came down toward his face. She leaned over and unbuttoned his shirt, opening it to display his pale chest. In a practiced motion, she slowly dragged her firm nipples up his chest and she kissed him briefly on his lips, a playful expression in her eyes. The tickling sensation then moved south as she moved her body toward his erection. The feel of her mouth was warm and wet on his cock. It felt better than he had anticipated and he was surprised when he heard himself moan. " _Shang di_!" he breathed. A few moments later she stopped sucking on him and his cock was so hard it was almost painful. His still-tipsy brain found some humor in his dick standing tall like a flagpole away from his supine body. Yaz, however, was still busy. Lifting her skirt she playfully showed him she was devoid of panties as she straddled his legs. Leaning forward, she moved like a cat, one graceful and predatory movement at a time. She positioned her wet lips right at the tip of his aching cock. The anticipation was suddenly tight in Simon's chest. The moment stretched out for an eternity. His hands clenched into fists for a moment before Yaz picked them up and placed them on her waist. Suddenly he felt present. This wasn't happening to him, it was happening with him. He felt her hips move, the muscles and bones and ligaments coordinating to slide her wet lips down the length of his shaft, enveloping him in sensation. He tightened his grip on her waist and centered himself internally as his hands conveyed her movements to his brain while his body was very nearly overwhelmed by the experience. Soon, though, he was able to come back to the surface and fully embrace the encounter. His eyes took in the way her skin shone with sweat. She smiled at him and raised her body off of his. She slid off his cock and rolled over on the bed. Leaning over on her hands and knees, she flipped her skirt up playfully, showing him her round pale ass. Looking over her should she smiled at him, "come play with me," she whispered hoarsely. The absence of the sensations on his cock was suddenly distracting.  
Simon prided himself in being an intelligent and evolved human, but in this moment he was no better than an animal. He felt a low moan escape his mouth which almost became a growl as he moved on his hands and knees toward her. He brought his mouth to her skin and kissed her leg, starting at her calf and then her thigh, and then her hip. Small kisses moving him toward her. She arched her back and leaning forward, showing her plump pussy, engorged from their previous activities. It was peeking out from between her legs in a cheeky and alluring way, begging for him to get closer. He touched it with his fingertips. He had never felt a woman's body in this way before. His knowledge of the human body from texts and lectures all felt hollow in this moment as his ignorance of how human machine really worked soaked his thoughts. Sliding his fingertips up and down and around the wet and warm space he felt her creases and folds. Exploring deeper his fingers found more layers and even more heat. The animal in his chest growled and he leaned into taste her. He felt her move under his hands and the sweet and tangy taste of her exploded in his mouth. His cock throbbed, reminding him it was still there and wanted so badly to be part of this. He gripped her ass with one hand as he steadied himself behind her, using his other to guide his erection to her hot opening. Yaz looked over her shoulder with an approving nod. She held still, waiting for him to make a move. Simon felt the same anticipation tight in his chest before he plunged himself deep inside her. His hips slapped against her ass creating a satisfying echo to the feral grunts he was emitting, mixing with the moans coming from his partner. His hands gripped the soft flesh of her waist and pulled her into him as he thrust. In too short a time, but also a small lifetime later, it was over. Light flashed behind his eyelids and a tidal-wave of sensation spasmed through his body. Simon cried out as the climax ripped through him.  
He collapsed on the bed and felt his muscles all unclench. His energy seemed to be draining out of his skin into the bed beneath him. He was vaguely aware of Yaz moving about the room. He opened his eyes and saw her dressed again, fixing her hair in the mirror. "What are you doing?" His voice was cracked in his parched throat.  
"I'm done here, honey. I have to get going." She finished her hair and was retouching her makeup. When she was done she came over and kissed his forehead. "Go forth," she said in a slightly sarcastic voice, "and see the universe. There's a million experiences left out there, this were just one of 'em."  
After the experience Simon took Yaz's words to heart. He rejoined his friends later that night and admitted the experience to Belor who cheered triumphantly. His friend clapped him on the back and toasted him. Over the next few years they would end up drifting away to different parts of the galaxy. They all finished medical school with good marks, none quite as good as Simon's, but good enough to land them all good residencies in well-known hospitals on different planets.

As Simon reviewed his last notes from his last round of tests he conducted on River, he wondered where all of those friends were now. Probably working their ways up the hierarchies of their different hospitals. He shook his head briefly as the thought crossed his mind what they would think seeing him here now. Surely they would have seen the bulletins out for his arrest. They would have read the Alliance's version of events and wondered what their awkward friend could possibly have done to end up a fugitive. Simon, who always followed the rules. Simon who deferred to authority over every other instinct. Simon took in a deep breath of cool sterile air. 'Simon who gave up everything to help his sister.' He narrated to himself.

Book's voice came over the small speaker in the infirmary. " **You should know, we have come unsavory company** "  
"Alliance?" Simon's chest tightened.  
" **Not in the slightest, but still, you should probably be close by in case they decide to shoot anyone**."


	7. Safe Part 1

Safe

Kaylee was moving through the docile cattle, touching each one gently as she passed. Jayne sat on the cross walk above, his legs dangling down. The livestock's gentle lowing bounced back at them off of the metal walls and ceiling which made the whole ship seem to hum.  
"Don't be gettin' too attached, there, cow-whisperer," Jayne grunted through a smile. "They'll be off to their new life as folks'es dinner in a few days."  
Kaylee rolled her eyes at him. "I ain't gettin attached." She smiled and held one cow's face between her hands, looking deep into its big brown eyes. "It's just that they like it, s'all."  
Jayne barked out a rough laugh. "They _shen-me_ now? They's just cows."  
Kaylee gave the one nearest the stairs a brief scratch under its chin before ascending the steps and dropping down next to Jayne. "Every last body in this 'verse has their own likes and dislikes. Seems the least I can do to give 'em some lovin a'fore they get on to their next spot. Cows ain't meant for space, ya'know, they don't know what to think all bein' stuck in here. They mill around, rub against their friends, and try to find their way home." Kaylee paused and a mist of emotion dropped over her eyes. "They don't know how to get home."  
Jayne dropped a heavy arm around Kaylee's shoulders and she leaned into his body. "Yer makin' em feel loved a'fore they die." He stated simply. Kaylee signed. Jayne shook his head, and added quickly "no, that ain't a bad thing!" He squeezed her shoulders and brushed her temple with a kiss. "I guess e'rry body deserves some love. The innocent ones most a'all."  
They sat together in silence for several minutes. Most of the crew had started avoiding this cargo bay except for explicitly cow-related activities. As the weeks passed this area had begun to have quite a stench. Jayne and Kaylee didn't seem to mind the smell, and it was nice to have this time together. Jayne leaned over and nuzzled the ticklish spot behind her ear.  
"I'm not so innocent," he whispered, his breath raised slight goosebumps on her neck. "But might ya have some lovin' for the likes a' me?" Kaylee turned into him and caught his lips in a kiss. She parted her lips to answer when a shout echoed up the metal hallways and the cows started lowing more loudly. Jayne dropped his arm from about Kaylee's shoulders and looked toward the source of the shout.  
"Speakin' a 'don't belong in space'," he muttered.  
Kaylee's eyes followed his. "Poor girl," She said. "And poor Simon. He's just tryin to help, but she can't tell the diff'rence a'tween Simon's tests and what evers it was they was doin' to her at the school."  
"How do you know?" Jayne asked. Part of him was curious, another part didn't want to know.  
"Simon was talkin' about it. He's gettin' so frustrated. Nothin' he's tried is helping much. She seems to have good days and bad days all on her own."  
"Talkin' with Simon," Jayne repeated. Kaylee looked back at him and punched him in the shoulder.  
"I can talk with anyone I please," she said firmly. She knew that Jayne felt possessive about her sometimes, but that was getting dangerously close to the attachment they insisted was against the rules. Besides, Simon barely looked at her. He talked sometimes if she made herself available, but he was too distracted with his doctoring to even seem to see Kaylee. Kaylee leaned back and propped herself up on her elbows, she looked out over the cows again. Jayne leaned forward and crossed his arms on the lower cable which made up the walk-way rails. Just then a loud crash followed more shouts coming from the med-bay hall.  
" _Wo de qidianchuan zhuangman le shanyu_." Mal's irritated mutter came from the captain as he descended the steps from the opposite side of the docking bay. He barely seemed to acknowledge Jayne and Kaylee sitting on the cross walk. "That girl is gonna drive the cows crazy." He said as he jogged across the walkway behind them. Glancing back over his shoulder, he added "Both ya'll get ready to land. We're comin' up on Jiangyin."  
"Aye cap'n tightpants!" Kaylee said to Mal's retreating form just before he disappeared through the far doorway.  
"I heard that!" He called back in the loudest reply he dared.

Kaylee stood and brushed some hay off of her faded green coveralls. "Back to work, lets bring these cows back to the ground where they belong!"  
Jayne pulled himself up and stood next to Kaylee, leaning slightly to place a kiss on the top of her head. "You land the ship… I'll make sure they get off."

Simon was exhausted. This was nothing new, he was nearly always exhausted these days. The ship still felt all wrong, there was something about it that always kept him on edge. After all this time, however, it began to feel like the lesser of the possible dangers the universe had to offer. At least when they were hurtling through dark space he sometimes felt free from the Alliance's hot breath on his neck. If someone had asked him how comfortable he was on Serenity yesterday he would have said "not very", but now that he and River had been ordered off the ship by Mal there wasn't anywhere in the universe he would rather be than back in his small quarters with its close walls and artificial lighting. In an almost comical converse, River was totally relaxed. She was swinging her arms happily as she skipped along the wooded path toward the nearby town of Xiamen. Simon had been told that Kaylee and Inara were already in town purchasing whatever basic supplies the small town offered, so they would be able to meet up with their crew-members and kill some time off-ship, allowing the shady dealings to go down smoothly in their absence.  
"Sl-slow down, River!" He begged, as he hurried after her. She was barely two strides ahead of him, but in this open space it felt like the trees were rushing away from them leaving a bright spotlight on the two most wanted individuals in Alliance space. Behind every tree and shadow were hidden eyes. Simon's arms twitched as his ever-tense muscles were constantly ready with fight or flight just a moment's notice away.  
"Keep up, slow-poke, we're on an adventure!" River laughed, child-like mirth in her voice. Simon saw his sister's face glow, flushed in the cool fresh air. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad. After all, these border moons didn't have an Alliance presence. He felt one or two muscles in his shoulders relax for a moment. Then the trees cleared and the town stood just ahead of them. His muscles tensed up again, three-fold.  
Xiamen was a small town. A handful of buildings stood arrayed around a narrow dirt road. Small shops would be selling basic supplies and trinkets. There was probably a bar or two which may have a bed for travelers. Simon could see a few signs showing that tradesmen had their basic set-ups where people could come in from miles around to utilize their services. And that… was about it. It took just a moment for Simon to take in the whole town. Simon had never been to towns like this before joining up with Serenity's crew, just a few months ago, but at this point in his life this was about the only type of town he would see. 'Though I'd much rather be seeing it from a viewscreen on the ship,' he thought broodingly. He noticed a flash of color standing out against the faded grays and browns of the wind-worn town. Inara and Kaylee walked with their arms looped together, both of them looked so relaxed and comfortable. It was as though they could be walking down a paved road in Persephone looking at high fashion displays, or strolling through a junkyard pointing out rusted ship hulls, and nothing would even put a bother in either of their minds. Simon wondered, not for the first or last time, how some people just managed to be so comfortable.  
Inara's brightly colored dress flashed for a moment in the bright sunlight before disappearing into the open door of one of the dirty storefronts. Seeing his friends brought both a warm relief to the ever-present anxiety, but also awoke his sharp annoyance with their captain. 'How dare Mal put us in danger?' he fumed to himself as he guided River toward the general store he saw Kaylee and Inara enter. River's eyes were wide with curiosity, ever absorbing every iota of information around her. Simon envied her apparent peace of mind in this moment. Responsibility to his sister and his own self preservation had seethed over each other like two temperatures of ocean current frothing together until they melded into one cold miasma of fear. This ocean of emotion was usually held back behind a cool and professional exterior. The decades spent being honed and shaped for social circles which were now light-years away from this dusty main street had built a strong wall which usually sufficed to mask his true feelings, but that social wall was beginning to crack after months of neglect.

Over the recent months Jayne had begun to think of Book as one of his friends. The dear mechanic was certainly his closest friend aboard Serenity. Apart from Kaylee, he was able to maintain good working relationships with the pilot and soldier, and Jayne did his best to keep his distance from everyone else. But it was the old preacher who seemed to take an initial interest in Jayne. After they built the gym together they would often visit it together. Usually they would exercise in silence but Book would occasionally speak. It was always something innocuous and at first it would catch Jayne off guard.  
"I had a revolver when I was young." The old man said one afternoon, while Jayne had been spotting for him.  
"Huh," Jayne grunted. Book did a few more reps before he went on.  
"My uncle took me out and lined up cans on a fence. We stayed out there all afternoon before I started hitting them with any consistency." Then the preacher was silent, apart from the quiet noises of exertion. Eventually Jayne began volunteering stories of his own. The days bled to weeks which bled to months. Jayne had grown to not only like Book, but trust him as well.  
Now Jayne shot a smirk across the makeshift corral at the older man. Book shared his smile before turning back to the captain. 'Preacher man knows stuff,' Jayne thought as he smacked the looped rope into the rough palm of his other hand. 'I'll bet he'd know how to talk to Kaylee 'bout… well.' Jayne was having trouble even formulating how he'd ask for advice for broaching the subjects of his emotions. Despite the others making jokes about his brash nature, he was an exceedingly cautious man at heart. Jayne picked his way around the corral toward Book. The older man was tightening the bindings lashing the mental rails together.  
"Book," Jayne grunted.  
"How long has it been since your last confessional, my child?" Book said, his face totally neutral for a moment before he and Jayne both barked out in laughter.  
"Ah, I got something I'm thinkin on." Jayne said, leaning against the fence looking out at the cows in what he hoped was a convincingly casual stance. "You're old."  
"Never forget that my book has very few things to say about kneecaps." Book replied dryly.  
Jayne laughed again and looked down at his hands, "Naw, you know what I mean. You've lived a lot of life." He looked into Book's crinkled eyes before pushing the button one more time. "Like… a LOT of life."  
Book rolled his eyes. "Was there a point to this torment or are you about to challenge me to a duel of fisticuffs or something else that YOUNG men find fascinating and worthwhile?" Book and Jayne both smiled, one at his hands and the other at his younger friend's face.  
Jayne tightened his fists and released them. As he gazed into his palms he started to slowly string the words together. "Ya know Vera?"  
"Your gun." Book replied in the affirmative.  
"Yeah, my most favorite gun." Jayne said. He turned his hands over and clenched them again. "If'n anyone were to touch Vera without my permission I would kill them." Book nodded. He didn't seem in any rush to get Jayne through his stumbling point. "I love that gun." Jayne turned and looked into his friend's eyes. "I love that gun, Preacher."  
Book nodded again, "I would say so."  
"But I would throw Vera into a furnace if it meant I could change someone's feelings. Preacher, I think I lo-"  
"We've got ourselves some company!" Mal's voice came from the far side of the corral. Men with not very concealed guns and unsavory expressions emerged from the wood line.  
"Huh," Jayne interrupted his own train of thought. "Yer better off on the ship, civilian." Jayne said as he clapped Book on the shoulder.  
"As I see it we're all civilians these days." Book replied, just as calm as he was throughout the beginning of Jayne's story. "I'll check in with our Captain before I head inside. You should stay alert, I don't quite like the look in this gentlemen's eyes."  
Jayne and Book split up and walked in opposite directions around the makeshift pen. Jayne heard the familiar tones of negotiation over less than legal property. Jayne wasn't sure what was putting Book on edge, this all seemed pretty routine to him. 'After the deal goes down,' he thought, 'I'll just have to find a way to casually restart that conversation. I think it was goin' really well.'

Simon looked at the class-less trinkets and junk scattered almost haphazardly around the dirty store. He almost heard his mother's voice chiding him in the back of his head: "Everything has its value to someone, and to disregard that value is to disregard that person's validity." 'Fine words, mother,' he thought, 'but you have never been to such backwards uncivilized places as we've been dragged to in the last six months.' Even as he had the thoughts, his well cultured guilt flared up. He shouldn't have said those things to Kaylee. She was one of the kindest members of the crew. She seemed to have a school-girl crush on him, if the signs his medical school friends had told him to look for were to be believed. He didn't really have any idea of what to do with that information, though. He had nothing in common with her. He'd only been in one relationship. It was short-lived and in the first year after his residency was complete. His friends had all gone in different directions across the galaxy, though they kept in touch via vid-mail with relative frequency. When his relationship with Lian started he felt a manly pride when he was able to tell his friends, especially Belor, about her. Lian was another young doctor, though she had attended a different medical school (one of the less prestigious, middle-tiered schools which Simon's parents would have been ashamed to admit was on Simon's safety school list). She was a brilliant doctor in her own right, and one of her few professional mis-steps was deciding to spend any of her valuable time trying to shape Simon into a worth-while significant other. Simon wasn't selfish, per se, rather her main complaint was that he was just "not emotionally present" during their relationship (whatever that was supposed to mean). Lian would talk at length about hopes and dreams and goals for where she'd like to go. Frontier medicine was one of her frequent fantasies. Simon picked up a badly carved water fowl of some sort. 'This is the sort of place Lian would have liked to set up a clinic.' He thought. 'She would have seen it as a place to make a "real difference"… as opposed to the difference I was making, performing life-saving surgeries every day.' Bitterness filled him once more. Lian ended things with him after a half year of ups and downs, but mostly downs. He was sad for a little bit, but in the end he knew it was probably for the best. He had spent every free moment of that time sneaking in and out of his public life trying to track down information on how to get River out of the Alliance's prison of a school. It wasn't surprising that he came off as even more emotionally and socially stunted than he did before. He couldn't have told anyone, even Lian, about his plans. They were too fragile and had continued to move steadily to the darker end of the legally gray spectrum. Frankly, it was good that he had so few ties to his life left when he had to sever them in order to get River out.  
River was safe now, and that was more important than his discomfort with his new life. Simon glanced over at the wall of tins filled with various dried herbs and small bottles of patent medicines, tonics claiming to cure everything from hysteria to headaches. River had been perusing the wall intently a moment ago, but now… "River?" In a panic, Simon spun in a complete circle looking into every dingy corner of the small store. The only other person in here was the old bearded shop keeper, dozing quietly behind the counter. "River!" Simon called, fear edging into his voice. He dashed out of the store.


	8. Safe Part 2

Safe Part 2

Kaylee stormed out of the store and back into the warm autumn day. Even the cheerful puffy clouds and the sounds and smells of the little town weren't making her as happy as they did just moments before. Inara slid her arm through the crook of Kaylee's elbow, slowing her to a strolling pace.  
"You need to give him some time," she said in her ever tranquil voice. She sounded like velvet pillows and steam from hot rocks. Kaylee's irritation lessened, but her feelings still stung.  
"You heard him," she felt her sadness and anger tightening her throat. "He hates it. He hates everything. He hates the ship, and he hates us."  
"Well of course he does! Do you blame him?"  
Kaylee stopped dead, causing her arm to leave Inara's gentle grasp. " _Qing ni zai shuo yici hao ma_?"  
"I mean it." Inara reached out and gingerly grasped Kaylee's arm once again, encouraging her to start walking once more. "You know what he's been through, and you know as well as I that the transition to this life hasn't been easy for him. He wasn't shaped for this life the way you and I were."  
Kaylee laughed. "You and I have had about as diff'rent a life shapin's as two folks can have!"  
Inara smiled at her and laughed as well. "That may be, but every step of the way led us to where we are now. Our lives were destined to intertwine aboard Serenity. The difference between us and our dear Tams is that we had the power over the decisions that led us here. I always knew in my heart that I would leave Sinon. And once I left I knew I wouldn't be happy to settle down in one place. How can one choose just one city, just one planet, just one adventure? I know you feel that way too, and so our life aboard Serenity is exactly what we want. It would be easy for either of us to simply set up shop in a central planet. I could sign on with a Companion network in any major city. You could work for any fleet or drydock, or even open up your own shop with your skills. I have no doubt that we could be successful in other lives. But you know we wouldn't choose those lives. Simon and River never chose this life, but I still have no doubt that they will find that it suits them eventually."  
Kaylee smiled sadly. Inara had a point. She was already shaped for life with Serenity as though she was molded to fit into her engine room by design. Simon was molded for a very different world. He's gonna be prickly and mean about it, but that's his right. "Water off a duck's back" her mother used to say. Sure, it stung her pride that he couldn't see how great things were here, but his words and his perception won't change the fact that she loved her life. 'He'll change his shape eventually,' Kaylee thought, 'being shaped for a big hospital and rich friends is a world different from a buncha criminals on a ship. But eventually time will change his shape.' "Hopefully by the time he comes around he's still wearin' those shiny waist-coats."  
At that Inara and Kaylee both burst out in unrestrained giggles. They stopped at the few remaining shops and collected a few supplies, mostly of the fresh food variety which Kaylee was looking forward to showing Shepherd Book.  
The two of them had cooked together on more than a few occasions since the Shepherd had joined the crew. He seemed surprisingly comfortable around the deep space rations they ate, though maybe that was just the "accept what you can't change" teachings from the abbey shining through. While everyone always preferred the real thing when it came to food, Shepherd showed an earnest appreciation and excitement for cooking which was contagious. He always volunteered to show Kaylee new things in the kitchen. With someone else to share in her enthusiasm, Kaylee was even more excited to pick out the fruits and vegetables from the dusty roadside stands on the edge of town.

As they approached the clearing where Serenity was resting she was glad to see the cattle hadn't been moved just yet. She smiled at Mal and Jayne as they were negotiating with the buyers. She dismissed the tension on the strangers' faces, she'd lived with criminals long enough to know when they were about to settle on a price and these two were about to hand over their money. Kaylee smiled as she felt Jayne's eyes on her. She looked back at him just before she stepped into the ship, and just in time to see a crowd of men with guns drawn come out from between the trees like a flood.  
"Marcus and Nathaniel Grange!" The lead man shouted, leveling a revolver at the buyers, "You are both wanted in connection to the murder of Rance Dervin. You are bound by law to stand down!" The sheriff's voice boomed with the practiced authority of local law enforcement. Mal and Jayne's hands jumped up to show that they were unarmed and to differentiate themselves from the shady buyers. Suddenly bullets and lasers were flying. Kaylee let out a little scream and she and Inara stepped back deeper into the ship to avoid any stray bullets.  
In slow motion Kaylee saw Book stagger. Something was wrong. Kaylee dropped the box of produce on the floor which was still spotted with streaks of drying water. Someone had been spraying out the traces of cattle from their ship. Strange the things the mind catches when time slows down. "No!" she let out a strangled shout.  
Inara grabbed Kaylee's arm with a surprising strength and the sudden pain woke her mind up. "Stay!" Inara commanded. The firefight was suddenly over. It was shockingly short, as most gunfights are. Silence emerged after the echoing shots faded.  
"What's going on?!" Wash's voice came from above.  
"Our buyers were criminals." Inara replied, but their voices were already fading behind her. Kaylee started running down the loading ramp toward her friends. Mal, Jayne, and Zoe were all up.  
"Stretcher!" Mal shouted at the cops, but the men were already leaving, their bound quarry all they cared about. Zoe was already running back to the ship and returned a moment later with their emergency stretcher. Jayne caught Kaylee as she rushed toward their fallen Shepherd. He held her for just a moment.  
Pushing her out to arm's length he said, "where's the doc?"  
She shook her head. Her voice wasn't working just yet. Jayne turned and rushed to help Mal and Zoe gently roll Book over and lay him back onto the metal stretcher. He and Mal took their places on either side of the bleeding man and lifted him up.  
"To the sickbay," Mal announced unnecessarily. Jayne nodded.  
As they moved him into the ship Kaylee hovered around, wringing her hands and unsure of what to do.  
"Any sign of Simon and River?" Zoe asked, catching Kaylee by the shoulder and trying to bring her out of her panic. "We need Simon, right now. Where is he?"  
"They're in town, we saw them in Xiamen. Near the shops." Inara volunteered from nearby. Fear streaked her features, but urgency kept her focused. Kaylee was having no such luck.  
"Shepherd? Can you hear me?" Kaylee's voice trembled slightly. Jayne and Mal gently rested Book on the examination table in the infirmary. Mal pulled a sheet from below the table and draped it over the preacher.  
Book's voice was raspy and weak. "I think I might be needin' a preacher."  
"That's good," Mal replied, his voice showing only the barest strain. "You just lie there bein' ironical. We're gettin the doctor." Mal stepped over and slapped his and against the intercom. "Wash, get to the infirmary, dong ma."  
Zoe moved with practiced calm as she cut Book's shirt, exposing the preacher's bloody chest and the ragged round wound.  
"You just relax now, Shepherd, Zoe and Mal've seen way worse in the war." Kaylee said with false certainty, "Shepherd?" Kaylee's eyes narrowed on his exposed chest… it wasn't moving. Book's chest wasn't moving. "Oh god he's not breathin'!" Kaylee gripped the foot of the examination table and bit her lip hard to keep from crying. Her stomach lurched and the six month old wound in her belly ached painfully. It hardly ever bothered her these days, but right now it felt as though it might start bleeding again. Her hand pressed into her belly over the scar. Jayne's eyes flicked to Kaylee at that movement. Stepping carefully behind Zoe, not wanting to interrupt the soldier's combat first aid training in action, Jayne took Kaylee's hand away from her belly. He intertwined his fingers with hers and guided her out of the crowded infirmary and into the small sitting area just outside. Just as they stepped away from the door Wash jogged into the area. Wash glanced at them, concern in his eyes, as he skidded around the corner of the infirmary door.  
" _O bu! Méi yǒu hǎo_." Wash breathed as he took in the bloody sight of the small room.  
"No, it ain't," Mal said quickly. "He ain't dead, but he is bad off. Wash, I want you to go into town and see if you can find that _shi zong_ doctor."  
Wash nodded and took off toward the cargo hold. A moment later Jayne heard the engine of Wash's four-wheeler rev and roar to life and the rumbling sound disappeared into the distance. Xiamen wasn't far, and it wasn't large, it won't take long for Wash to find the Tams and then his friend would be okay. Book's body was still, but suddenly he began to thrash. Leaving Kaylee in the waiting area Jayne dashed forward and helped Zoe hold his friend's body down to the table as Mal administered an injection into Book's shoulder. A moment later and the seizure stopped.  
'That ain't a good sign,' Jayne thought. He glanced into Mal's face, it was stoic and didn't betray a thing. Zoe's face was the same. Kaylee was right that they'd seen a lot of wounds in the war, but he'd seen his fair share, too. He'd rarely traveled with a medic of any skill, though, so casualties were either shipped off to the nearest med center or left to bleed in the dirt, depending on just where the firefight took place and just how liked the injured individual happened to be. Sitting and waiting for a doc to arrive was a relatively new experience.  
It felt like watching Kaylee be shot all over again. He felt helpless and angry. Kaylee's quiet whimpering made him turn toward the door again. Inara was there with her, she and Kaylee were standing together gazing into the room. Inara had her arms wrapped around Kaylee, her chin resting on Kaylee's shoulder. Jayne suddenly felt a wave of kindred affinity toward everyone around him. This crew felt more like a family to him than he'd known for most of his life. Now his brother's life hung in the balance and the one person who can help him is off shopping. Jayne breathed through his nose. He knew he couldn't blame the doctor for being off the ship, he had heard Mal's suggestion for them to take a stroll, but with little else to occupy himself with he was having trouble not feeling more of the ever-present irritation with Simon. He left Book in Mal and Zoe's hands and stepped out of the infirmary. His fists clenched and unclenched, trying to find some purpose. Jayne grumbled internally and made his way to the corner of the cargo bay where he and Book and made their gym. It had been dismantled and the pieces stored away while the cattle were on board. He set to work putting the gym back to how he and the Shepherd liked it. Having a goal helped to keep his mind off of Book's still form, laying on the table in the cold white room just a dozen meters away.

Kaylee's voice roused him from his distraction. "Where's Simon?"  
Jayne looked up as Wash drove into the cargo bay, "They weren't there." Wash replied and started for the stairs.  
"What?!" Kaylee followed Wash, her voice reaching new octaves.  
"It looks like they got themselves snatched," Wash continued, "If we'd read the bulletins for this little rock we'd've known. Folks in the hills take people sometimes, tradesmen and the like." He finished this sentence as he ascended the steps toward the upper decks.  
"And now they've got themselves a doctor." Mal stated, no one heard the captain approach, but certainly he'd been waiting just as anxiously as the rest of them. "Get us in the air, Wash."  
The pilot nodded and headed for the cockpit. "We ain't leavin' them!" Kaylee's voice betrayed her emotions.  
Mal punched the controls and initiated the closing procedure for the cargo bay door, the ramp lifted up and sealed them in with a hiss and low clunks of locking mechanisms. He looked into Kaylee's eyes and lifted a hand to her chin. She felt the earnest truth of his words more than heard them. "I lost two people today, Kaylee, I ain't about to let it be three."  
Kaylee's initial reaction subsided slightly as she thought of Shepherd Book laying on the bed in the infirmary, the wound on his chest still seeping blood despite Zoe's best efforts. She felt cold, but her fears for Simon and River were falling lower down her anxious thoughts' pecking order as the scar on her belly twinged again.

Mal followed Wash to the cockpit and left Kaylee and Jayne in the cargo bay. Jayne dropped the last crate into place with a loud clang which startled Kaylee out of her internal spiral. Kaylee looked at Jayne with tears rimming her eyes, threatening to spill. Jayne looked up at Mal's retreating back before stepping to Kaylee and pulling her into an embrace. She felt fragile in this moment. "Shepherd needs a doctor." Jayne murmured into the top of Kaylee's head. "They're gon' find him one real quick now, you just see."

Together they made their way up to the infirmary. Kaylee sat down next to Shepherd Book and held his hand. The old man didn't wake up at her gentle touch. "He did this for me once," she said quietly to Jayne and Zoe. Zoe smiled sadly and nodded.  
Jayne didn't say anything. He thought back to when he crouched in the crawlspace above the small, sterile room. He remembered his legs cramping painfully as he counted bullet fragments being pulled out of his friend and lover. He was so afraid to lose her. That fear, so distant during his long years of mercenary work, was creeping back in. Love had always come intertwined with fear. It was part of the reason it was easier to keep everyone away.  
He was good about keeping that necessary emotional distance in all of his previous jobs. Ever since he first went off world to exchange violence for money he kept every other human being an arms-length away.  
How could things have gone so sideways? How could he have let them get so out of hand? It had only been, what, ten months since he had come aboard? Not even a year had passed and now he had fallen in love and forged an honest-to-god friendship.

Feeling useless at the moment, Jayne went to his bunk. He didn't even hear the familiar creaks and clangs as he descended the steps into his small room. He cast about aimlessly for a few moments, looking for something to occupy his hands and his mind. Clenching and releasing his hands he crouched on his rough blanketed bunk and his eyes locked on each weapon individually. He made up his mind and grasped one of his smaller hand-guns. It was a deceptively heavy-for-its-size revolver, a classic earth-that-was style. Its circular chambers were empty. He popped the cylinder and gave it a brisk spin before snapping it shut again. It was not one of guns he kept ready to grab for combat at a moment's notice, those are all kept loaded and at the ready. This one was more of a cultural curiosity. Jayne realized he'd never shown it to Book. He should have. The old preacher would have liked to see it, especially after his story about shooting cans as a kid. Jayne shook himself, he was already thinking about the old man in past tense. He grunted angrily at himself as he roughly jammed the revolver back into its spot on the gun wall. Suddenly he felt warm and itchy, his irritation with the whole day was becoming palpable. He realized that there was still blood on his shirt and pants. Not a lot (and not that it was a rare thing in his line of work) but this felt different, too close and too much. Jayne kicked off his boots and pulled his shirt over his head. He stripped with a near panic and threw his clothes into a beige pile on the floor. Down to his skivvies and socks Jayne dropped to a seat on his narrow bunk and caught his face in his hands. The weight of the day sunk into his calloused palms and he just breathed. In and out. In. And out.

Jayne must have fallen asleep because now he was waking up. The hairs raised on the back of his neck. There was someone else here. A chill went through him, as though he were a gazelle who had just caught the scent of a predator. The fear was old. The kind of wake-up in the wee hours of the morning when he heard his drunken father crash in through the front door.  
"We're docking soon" Kaylee whispered. Turning slightly Jayne looked over his shoulder. Kaylee had climbed over his sleeping form and was nuzzled up against his back. "It's an Alliance ship. One a' them big ones. Flyin' cities." She spoke airily. Not quite like herself. Jayne rolled over to face her and wrapped an arm around her.  
"How's the preacher?" He whispered. Kaylee nodded slowly.  
"He's awake. Real weak, but he's said a few things. We told him we were gonna ask the Alliance for help and he seemed relieved. I hope -." Kaylee's voice trailed off. Jayne nodded and pulled her closer to him. Wash would announce when docking was about to commence so they had time. Kaylee tucked her head under his chin, her cheek felt cool against his chest. His own body was warm from slumber. To his surprise, Kaylee's hands started trailing down his body.

Arousal is a funny thing. It lives in the emotions, but all those feelings have a tendency to get all mixed up in each other's houses. Jayne had had some of his favorite one night stands at the drunken parties merc gangs throw in place of wakes. People feelin' sad or scared or angry or numb all could end up just as likely to pull a knife on each other as they were to start feeling each other up.

Kaylee weren't no one night stand, though. And they weren't at a wake. Book was still alive and was about to get help. "Kaylee." He murmured as her small but skilled hands cupped his half-firm cock. "Is this what you need?"  
Kaylee's hand stopped for a moment, it too felt cool against his hot skin.  
"I don't know what I need." She whispered back.  
"Do you know what you want?"  
Kaylee was quiet for a while. "I want to feel better than I do right now." Kaylee tilted her head back and looked into his eyes.  
Jayne weighed his options for half a moment before sliding his shorts off and pulling Kaylee into him. She rolled over so her back was against his chest and his body curved around hers. Sliding his own rough hand down her body he was unsurprised to find she was already disrobed from the waist down. He slid a finger between her legs to find her folds already growing wet. Guiding his now fully hard shaft with a careful hand he slid into the tight crevice. Immediately he heard Kaylee suck in a breath to keep from gasping. She tensed for a moment before relaxing and leaning into him, driving his cock deeper into her. Laying like this didn't afford him the full range of motion he usually preferred, but it did allow him to wrap his arms around his love and hold her close. He breathed in her smell and slid his palm up her belly and past the ripple of scar tissue he'd long since learned to associate with gratefulness instead of fear. Cupping her lower breast he watched the top one bounce slightly as he thrust gently into her. Kaylee's eyes were closed and she leaned back into his body. Her arm reached back and followed the curve of his hip as he spooned her. Her hand rested on his hip and guided him back and forth, penetrating over and over into her tight core. Jayne slid his hand back south after tweaking her raised nipples and his fingertips slid in between her folds. He found her warm clit and stroked it in rhythm to his slow throbbing pumps. Small squeaks began to escape Kaylee's lips, past her clenched jaw. Jayne was having trouble keeping himself from grunting loudly like the animal part of him wanted to be. He concentrated on Kaylee's movements and gathered that she was close. She began to clench rhythmically and he almost lost it.  
" **Quing wen** , do you want to come?" He whispered in an almost pained voice.  
Kaylee gripped his hip hard with her top hand and began pinching and rolling her own nipples with the arm pinned against the bed. She released a tight moan and nodded quickly. Steeling himself first, Jayne quickened his pace with both his thrusts and the strokes of his fingertips. He had to hold out just untiiiil… He felt Kaylee tighten and then release, her whole body twitched randomly and a strangled cry escaped past the lips she was tightly biting. But Jayne didn't notice any of that as he had released his own self control at that moment and was lost in a sweaty mess of his own. He dropped his arm over her and they both lay panting for several minutes.

 **"Docking, look alive"** Wash's voice crackled through the overhead speaker.


	9. Safe Part 3

(A/N: Whew I made it! I've been home with a sick baby today and didn't have much time to write. I'm all caught up with my backlog of chapters, so from here on out it'll be more or less real-time updates! I'm going to try and stick to Sunday posts, though. I'm ready to finally move on from Safe! I kept being surprised by how much was going on in this episode!)

Safe Part 3

Simon's heart sank as he saw Serenity lift above the tree line. The men escorting them down the rough path barked out a mean laugh before nudging Simon in the back with his shotgun to get their small group moving once more. He was going to die here. He was going to die here and River was going to be found by people from the town. Surely they would have seen at least a few bulletins from the Alliance offering massive rewards for the girl with the big, dark eyes. River would not even know how to defend herself. As the panic slid firmly into position over his senses the worst possible next step occurred:  
"Found you!"  
River wouldn't even need to be found. These brutes would hand her over to the Alliance themselves at the first possible chance.  
The men took her by the upper arm, not as roughly as they held Simon, and guided her along the trail deeper into the forest. If the brutes were surprised by River's sudden appearance, they didn't show it. Simon tried to walk as closely to his sister as their captors allowed, a final effort of protection as they were led into certain doom.

Certain doom. Simon had no real theories as to where they were being led, but his fears and internal dialogs were certainly coming up with hundreds of terrible ways to die. Despite how slowly the sun moved across the sky, the final reaches of light were surprisingly quick to be snuffed out as the red evening sun sunk behind the distant mountains. They had been walking for hours, now in darkness, but no words were exchanged between their captors. They had to stop moving eventually, Simon theorized. When they stopped for the night they would have to make camp. They would probably only have one person awake at a time to keep watch. That's when Simon would make a break for it. He would have to find a way to either subdue the man on guard quietly enough to not wake the sleeping ones or kill them all. Simon silently took note of the weapons he saw on each man and inexpertly ranked them in order of ease of theft. 'Literally any other member of the crew would be more adept at this,' he thought, surprising even himself at the deep longing he felt to be back among the group of strangers who abandoned them to this world.

His plans for theft, murder, and escape into the dark woods with River melted when he realized they weren't stopping for camp. Torch light flickered through the trees ahead of them. The telltale dancing patterns of firelight were casting long and irregular shadows of the trees around them. Unlike the treeline around Xiamen, where the trees thinned and became narrow and young the closer you got to the planned town, betraying evidence of a larger clearing made where the town had been perhaps overly ambitious in its planning and the forest was slowly correcting the humans' errors, the treeline around this ramshackle spat of structures was abrupt. One moment they were in the deep woods nearing the foothills of the mountains, the next they were standing before a small crowd of dirty people. The light from a dozen torches and a few large bonfires did a poor job of showing Simon any sort of pattern here. The people appeared to range in age from a skinny newborn to a bent old man clutching a worn tree-limb for a cane. The structures, also, appeared to range from tents and lean-to's to one or two actual houses with four walls and a recognizable door and roof. The structure that Simon and River were led to was one of the in-between structures. Four walls and a roof, but no door or windows. The cool night air flowing into the dimly lit room seemed to be more of a benefit than a curse at this moment, however. Simon subconsciously itemized the sick-smells as he followed the town healer, a woman name Doralee. Fever sweats, diarrhea, bile-heavy vomit, and more.  
Doralee greeted him with joy. "We've been in need of a doctor for some time here," she explained in a quiet sing-song voice.  
Simon looks from her earnest face, flush with innocent elation, to the bodies in the beds and cots around the small sick-room. He notes that these people, and Doralee herself, are all clean -unlike the people outside- so some initial doctoring had at least begun here. Stepping carefully alongside one of the beds Simon observed a poultice of herbs had been bound and lain over a wound.  
"Was there a sickness here?" Simon asked carefully. There were only twenty or so people outside that he was able to see, he could assume there were probably another ten or twenty he hadn't seen. It was dark so he could not see the full area of the community, but the group felt _off_. The social statistics weren't adding up to a healthy and robust population, even a small one.  
"Not as such," Doralee bobbed her head side to side, the evident happiness to have someone here to help her had not left her face at all. Being back to her domain, however, she went back to her rounds of checking on her patients. "Normal bouts of illness and injuries of the body. Most things go away on their own, but when they don't the folks here need a little healing help along the way. I've done the best I can with what I learned from our last doctor's books." She gestured toward a small shelf in the corner with three ancient-looking books. Paper books bound in peeling covers. Simon was shocked. While he had seen paper books before, they were mostly behind glass in university libraries or in the offices of very important people, he was not expecting to find on here. 'Then again, I wasn't expecting any of this.' He reminded himself.  
Nodding to Doralee, he rolled up his sleeves. "Boil some water and show me what instruments you have." She beamed and stepped out of the small house. River sat down on the bed next to a small girl with dirty matted hair and smiled at him as well. Simon smiled back at River, 'Lian, wherever you are, I think I'm going to make a difference.'

They wordlessly agreed to not arrive at the same time. Jayne rolled out of bed and quickly began yanking clean clothes out of his closet and pulled them on. He kicked the blood-stained clothes into a pile to be dealt with later. As he was jerking his boots on, Kaylee stepped over to his small bathroom and began washing up. Jayne's eyes followed her. Now dressed, he stepped over to place a gentle kiss on her forehead before he ascended the ladder.

Jayne tromped up the metal steps to the cockpit. "What's the news?" He asked Wash.  
The pilot's blond hair was sticking up more than usual, as though he'd been attempting to pull tufts out while waiting for the all-clear.  
"We're on the approach and everything looked fine, but as soon as we started trying to dock for some reason they seem mistrustful of us. I told them it was an emergency but now they're makin' us wait" Wash shook his head, " _wǒ men méi yǒu shén me kě yǐn mán de_ "  
"For once," Jayne muttered. It was true, there wasn't a scrap of illegal nothin' on the ship right now. They just needed a doctor. Is this how it was for the good tax payin' citizens as well? Jayne assumed life was somehow easier for the quiet, good, rule-followin' folks when it came to getting help from the government… but even as he wanted to feel surprise the feeling felt flat. 'There's a reason it's gettin' harder and harder for folks on the lighter end of gray to stay there,' Jayne thought. 'The shiney light 'o civilization still don't give a-'  
" **Serenity, this is the I.A.V. Magellan, you are permitted to dock. Prepare yourselves to be boarded.** "

Jayne nodded at Wash and set off toward the infirmary at a jog. He was going to get his friend to the doctor as quickly as possible, let Wash and Mal do the hand shaking and Alliance butt-kissing. Jayne will carry his brother into hell if need be. Zoe arrived at the infirmary at the same time and they shared a silent appreciation for the other as they each took a side of Book's cot and gently slid the pieces together under his barely-conscious form. Book's eyes fluttered open a crack, he parted his lips as if to speak but no sound came out.  
"Just save your words, preacher," Zoe said quickly, "we'll all be deserving a good long sermon from you in a few days time."  
Jayne silently thanked Zoe for speaking. His throat wasn't working just now. The words in his mind weren't meant for the world and while he had so much he wanted to say to Book he couldn't shake the fear that anything he said might be the last thing his friend heard. They carried him gently but quickly through the narrow hall to the large cargo bay, the docking clamps were already sealed and Mal stood at the door release. Jayne heard the familiar hiss of the pressure neutralizing and his inner ear notified him of some minor adjustments as the docking doors opened.

Simon felt tired but there was another feeling, a strange feeling. Was this… pride? Contentment? Satisfaction? 'It's been to long since I've been a doctor.' Simon thought. He was slowly turning pages in the books that Doralee had inherited from the previous doctor. One was a book of anatomy, another an anthology of herbs and plants, the third was a bible from a flavor of religion Simon had not been exposed to, though he was sure many of these border moon faiths had some similar roots to ones he was familiar with.  
"This place could be good for her," Doralee's voice broke through his thoughts, they had been discussing River. Simon had gathered that these people had no connections with the Alliance, or any government for that matter, and would therefore not know about he and River's bounties. There were certainly members of the community who would find that information interesting and possibly actionable, but no one here even knew their last name and it was seeming less and less likely that anyone would ask.

Outside, Ruby took River's hand. Ruby walked silently around the small village. She would occasionally stop and look at something, a building or an object or a sleeping form, but she would then move on and tug lightly on River's hand beckoning the older girl to follow. River understood the story the girl was telling. She watched it all play out, the ghosts of the past reenacted their horrible ways before her eyes. This town was sick, and was full of sick people. Not the kind of sickness that Simon could help. No. Sick. Bad. Wrong. Sick. 'Lance the wound, drain the bad blood out.' The joy that used to live here died. The ideals that the first leader had died too. These people were going to die. Not this winter, but next winter. They didn't need to know that. They did need to know other things. Bad. Sick. Wrong. Simon would know how to help. River let Ruby lead them back to the sick house. River saw the ghosts of Doralee trying to doctor people. She was good. Help. Heal. Clean. Good. Maybe Doralee and Simon together could help. Yes. Help.  
_

The crew sat in the cold steel chairs in the waiting room. 'Why does every brush we have with the Alliance end up with my ass gettin' numb in a _gorram_ waitin' room?' Jayne stood up, the sudden movement attracting the eyes of his crewmates, the only other folks in the waiting area. He began to pace irritably.  
"Anyone want to start placing bets on what our dear Shepherd's ident card said?" Wash asked in a low voice. The rest of the crew looked at each other but remained silent.  
"E'rybody likes Shepherds? Maybe it's like diplomatic immunity?" Kaylee ventured in an equally quiet voice.  
Silence overtook the crew again. Several tense minutes passed so slowly they may have been hours. Suddenly a buzz broke through their anxious internal turmoil.  
"Surgery completed. You may enter visitation bay twelve." A cold robotic voice announced through the tinny speakers.

The rest of their time spent aboard the Magellan was past in a blur. They got their patched up preacher back aboard with a bottle of antibiotics and some basic instructions from the Alliance surgeon for aftercare and they were asked, not politely, to vacate the docking region immediately. The Serenity and her crew were all too happy to oblige.

"Set my rudder to this place," Mal muttered to Wash while leaning against the back of the pilot's seat. They watched the giant ship start to move away and eventually began to shrink to a spikey blip on the radar. "Let's get back to Jiangyin and see what trouble our Tams have been up to."  
"Setting course," Wash replied, he couldn't keep the smile out of his voice. They were all relieved to have Shepherd back on board with a good prognosis, but there was something about getting their whole terribly stressful crew back together which felt right.

As they approached the planet Kaylee set up a scan of the region of hills outside of Xiamen. "Found 'em, cap'n!" She chirped excitedly. "They're not far from where we were, just here." Mal squeezed her shoulder as she pointed out the cluster of structures nearly hidden in the foothills of the mountains.  
"Good job, little Kaylee. Lets bring our lost sheep home. I have a feeling they've not been makin' friends."


	10. Our Mrs Reynolds

Content warning: reference to domestic violence and child brides.

Our Mrs Reynolds

The music tickled Kaylee's ears but she could barely hear more than the highest tinny notes over the laughter and singing of the crowd. Bodies rushed in and out and spun around in chaotic fervor. The faces of the strangers and friends alike were glowing in the bright bonfire light, a galaxy of bright stars dancing about in their orbit around their burning hot sun. The heat from the fire was radiant, as she spun closer and farther she could feel the cool night air kissing her flushed skin. Her face hurt from smiling, but Kaylee couldn't help herself. This was the most fun she'd had in weeks.  
The slow crawling months that had passed since Shepherd Book's wounding and near death had been trying for all of them. The Shepherd had healed, slowly, under the skilled care of Simon and the round-the-clock attentiveness of every member of the crew. While Simon assured them all that the Alliance doctors did a great job on his surgery, the fact remained that Book was old. Healing took time, and it wasn't an easy road. Book's body had to do the hard work of knitting itself back together, which left him exhausted and weak. The crew took turns feeding him, dressing him, washing him, and reading to him over those first few weeks. Even when he was awake, Book's arms were weak and his hands shook terribly. Eventually he was able to do most things for himself, but they always had someone with him to help him move about. Their attentiveness was accepted with grace, but everyone was feeling the strain.  
The stress of worrying over a family member is a special kind of physical and emotional exhaustion. Kaylee began to recognize the creases around Simon's eyes on some of the late nights when she had stayed up sitting next to the preacher, listening to him breathe shallowly. Her eyes would stray over to their thin doctor. He would be sitting in the corner of the infirmary, reading through his medical texts, making notes and pinching the bridge of his nose when he'd become frustrated. Kaylee saw the concern in his eyes. As the weeks passed and it was clear the Book was healing and improving, the crew shared a collective sigh of relief. Simon had no such relief. His efforts to learn about his sister's troubles were running into countless dead-ends.  
Kaylee dropped down onto the roughly hewn bench next to Simon. The young doctor jumped slightly but relaxed when he saw who it was.  
"Oh sorry," Simon said quickly, apologizing for his reaction, "I was just…" he gestured toward the dancing people. Kaylee smiled as she followed his gaze and saw River spinning and dancing with more grace and skill than Kaylee had expected.  
"Wow, she's amazing!" Kaylee said. Simon just nodded.  
"She used to…" he began with a smile but his voice trailed off and sadness crept into his face. Kaylee put a hand on his knee and didn't say anything. She knew it was hard for him. River was in pieces now, instead of being whole. There were moments, like now, where it almost was like nothing had happened. There would be times when she was coherent and intelligent and funny and in control of her own immensely powerful mind. These moments were both wonderful and agonizing for Simon. He wanted so badly to believe that she was back. But time and time again, the short time of respite would come to a tragic and sudden end. She would scream in fear or pain or both. She would fall to the ground, forget where she was or who was around her. She would become violent or destructive, or simply catatonic. She would go limp and stare into space while Simon carefully lifted her up like a child and carried her to her quarters. River was not well, and these short times where she appeared to be were both a blessing and a curse for her brother.  
Kaylee and Simon sat together, just the two of them, in a quiet solace for several minutes. They watched River moving amongst the dirty and joyful villagers as they all baltered in an orbit around the tall bonfire. Kaylee looked on in joy as she watched her friends enjoying themselves thoroughly. Jayne was showing Inara a rough dance which involved a lot more stomping of feet than the types of ballroom experiences she was used to. Her musical laugh was floating over and making Kaylee's heart warm. Wash and Zoe were swaying together in a sleepy way which wasn't quite a dance. Mal was dancing with a local girl, a silly flower crown upon his head. Book was talking with an elderly man from the village, their two gray heads bowed together over a game with rough wooden pieces. Shepherd Book burst out laughing over some clever move the other man made and Kaylee smiled.  
"We should dance." Kaylee announced suddenly. Simon looked startled.  
"We- what- me?" He stammered.  
Kaylee stood and took his hand. "Yes, you and me. I know this is probably not the kind of party you're used to." She gently pulled him to his feet. "You probably used to dance at balls and such, but this is good too. And, dancing is good for you. You're a doctor so you should know that." Kaylee smiled broadly and took Simon's other hand as well, guiding him toward the bonfire. Simon followed obediently.  
"I- well actually," Simon seemed to be more flustered than usual, he moved as though his legs were alien and he was trying to learn how to operate them without the necessary manuals, "I never have been one for dancing." He finally concluded.  
Kaylee smiled and cocked her head to the side. "Well that don't mean you can't never start. Now's a good time as any!" She began stepping in a basic step-skip-step motion which was an easy dance to follow. Most parties like these weren't ones for complicated step patterns as even the youngest and drunkest members of the village were able and expected to participate. Simon followed her directions obediently and eventually even allowed the smallest of smiles to flicker across his face. From the sidelines Inara was clapping her hands joyously and Jayne had leaned a little harder into the hard ciders which were being distributed liberally.  
Kaylee felt the schoolgirl crush flutter in her chest as Simon danced with her. He kept a polite distance but otherwise followed her lead.  
"We'd have shindigs like this back on Rohan." Kaylee told him. "I grew up in a village not so diff'rent from here." Kaylee jerked her head in the vague direction of the small dirty collection of structures. "We weren't far from Endoras which is where my parents probably hoped I'd end up. Gettin' a husband or a job in a factory or some such."  
Simon's eyes widened. "A factory? You mean as an engineer after you finished school? Does Rohan have good engineering programs? I'm afraid I am not familiar with that planet."  
If Kaylee didn't know better, she would have thought Simon was making a joke. "Rohan may have a couple schools what teach some buildin' and what not, but I… no one from my village has ever seen 'em. No, my parents' hopes for me were to either end up workin' a line or poppin' out babies for a husband in the big city. Anythin' but stayin' put in the village, really. My ma and da had this whole plan for me. When I was about 13 my ma and some of the other women of the village started arrangin' these 'meetins' with men from Endoras. My ma insisted this was good, that one 'a these men would decide to marry one 'a the young girls from our village and she'll have 'made it' in the world. She'll be able to move out of the crappy village of farmin' bad soil and livin' off game meat to a real house in Endoras. Ma would do her best to make me 'presentable' before these meetin's but I always seemed to do or say the wrong thing and I never got picked… I felt sad at the time, but honestly I was relieved. My da was the one who got her to lay off the tryin' to marry me off. He said I was strong enough to get a job in one of the factories, which would be fine for a few years 'til I was able to find a husband. So when I was 16 I left under the pretense of gettin' a line job, but ended up bouncin' around a couple of diff'rent jobs. An apprentice mechanic took a fancy and I was stayin' with him for a while. He didn't like it when I'd tell him what he was doin' wrong so to avoid the black eyes I just went ahead and fixed things. His boss liked that so he let me stay. I made a small scrap a money for myself but then Mal came along with Serenity and I left them all in the dirt."  
Simon stammered but didn't say anything. He'd never asked Kaylee about her life before. None of the crew, actually. He assumed she'd studied engineering at a university, not a top tier one, of course, but at least an accredited program. "You are…" he began and then changed his mind, "I'm very glad you found Serenity. I am glad to have met you. And… you are a very skilled mechanic." He ended. He kicked himself internally, how lamely did that come out? But Kaylee didn't seem to mind his stumbling words.  
"Thank you," she replied with a smile, "And I'm glad that you found Serenity." Simon felt the heat rise in his cheeks. "I know you don't see the ship in the same way I do, but she's a good ship. She's there for her crew when we need her most. And… when you do finally move on from Serenity onto whatever comes next for you and River," Kaylee's voice caught for the briefest of moments before she smiled and regained composure. "I hope that you look back on us fondly."  
Simon didn't know what to say to this. He gave her a tight-lipped smile and awkwardly focused his attention back on his feet. He wasn't sure what was making him more uncomfortable: Kaylee's kindness or thinking about the future.

"So Mal got himself hitched. Kaylee sweet talked the doctor all night. Inara had some good laughs at all o' us. And I got some dumb stick." Jayne summarized to Book the next morning as the older man slid a plate of fresh scrambled eggs across the table toward him.  
"I think we all had a lovely time down on that planet," Shepherd Book said solemnly. "I'm feeling grateful to have learned more about another culture, despite my own personal feelings about their… cultural norms" he ended, the politeness of his words not betraying the bitterness hanging on the syllables.  
"Yer talkin' about the wifing?" Jayne grunted between mouthfuls of egg.  
"Indeed."  
"Derrial, my friend, you sure got yourself some funny place to stand. She's happy here ain't she? She think's Mal's one hell of a catch, for some reason. And she's probably right that he's better'un most men folk her kind is like to end up with. Ain't your special book full o' stories of men takin' women as spoils of war, women cursed with pain o' childbirth and what not? I ain't sayin' it's good or anything but the universe is a dark place. This seems like a pretty good way for this girl's life to go." Jayne had seen wives purchased from a variety of poor planets. The goals of a lot of the mercenaries he had worked with was to be rich enough to buy a pretty wife or concubine and retire. A lot of the big bosses had at least one. At the end of the day he didn't see much a difference between wifing and mercenary work. They all sell their bodies and sometimes their lives for a hot meal and the chance to make tomorrow better than today. And if your boss ends up bad you can always kill him and take his money. He'd seen the wifing and merc work go that way plenty of times as well.  
"While my holy book does have references to such sexist ideas, most branches of my faith have learned to take such stories with a grain of salt. We are to follow the spirit and examples of faith in a higher purpose and bigger picture, while not falling to the same shortcomings as those who have come before us. I am of the belief, which seems to wax and wane as society evolves and devolves, that women should have as many options and freedoms as men, and that young women like Saffron shouldn't be put in the position of a forced marriage in the first place, regardless of the spouse in question. I find the whole arrangement distasteful."  
Jayne nodded slowly. It still sounded like a whole pile of _la ji_ to him. Cherry pickin' the bits you like and leavin' the bits you don't. That's the sort of thing religious folks this universe around all liked doin'. The Shepherd was his friend, though, so he's allowed his own bit of hypocrisy if it makes his life better. "You think things'll ever change?"  
Book sighed. "I am wont to believe that it will, though I can not say how long until a true change comes to pass."

They were going in a loop, this was getting to be infuriating. Kaylee furrowed her brow. "Do you see me tellin' you who you can see or be friends with or fuck?"  
Jayne's brow jumped up toward his close cropped hair. "You don't see a slight difference a'tween the steps in that list?!"  
They were in Kaylee's quarters, she had invited him down here for a quick roll in the hay but they had gotten sidetracked quickly.  
"What should it matter? We don't have any say over each other's lives so it don't matter one bit. You don't own me, Jayne Cobb!"  
Jayne's brow dropped to match Kaylee's glare. "I ain't never said I did! And you're right, I don't have a say over who you fuck, but I do have a say over whether I'm gettin' involved in a triangle." He picked up the datapad which started this whole argument. It was a novel written by some high society type on a central planet, lent from the doctor as a continuation of some prior conversation between the two of them. Jayne's mind was both racing and frozen. He had so many things he wanted to say but none of them were coming through right by the time he was forming words. "I didn't sign on for that."  
Kaylee huffed out an angry sigh. "We said no attachments, that was what you agreed to when this started. A triangle shouldn't matter if you don't draw hard lines. If you want hard lines you should get a wife like Cap'n did."  
Jayne slowly handed Kaylee the book. He wanted to say so much but the words weren't coming. "A wife."  
Kaylee snatched the novel from him. "Maybe the next planet we land on you can find yourself one and you can leave me alone."  
The words stabbed Jayne in the heart. This was going all wrong. 'I do want a wife' is what his heart was trying to say, but he was so hurt and frustrated the words weren't going to be right so he just kept them back. Wordlessly he turned and climbed out of Kaylee's quarters.

Kaylee dropped down onto her bunk in a frustrated heap. Where did he get off trying to corner her like that? She brought the datapad up in her hand and glanced at it before dropping onto the bed next to her. She didn't actually like the novel all that much. It was too stuffy for her taste. The characters were unrelatable, the plot was dry and slow. She was going to lie and tell Simon she loved it, but first she had to finish it so that she would be able to pass whatever unintentional quizzing the doctor was sure to do. Kaylee's stomach was churning. Her anger was mixing together with all of the memories floating back to her from life on Rohan. She had done careful pruning of her memories over the years since coming aboard Serenity, so that looking back she almost only saw the good and shiny parts of the past. This whole mess with Saffron woke a lot of those dark quiet bits of the past. Her small exchanges with the woman seemed to specifically target those difficult memories.  
Since the other woman came aboard Kaylee had barely seen any other member of the crew, but that wasn't surprising as everyone else seemed to be in a quiet, introspective, and emotion-filled state as well. Wash and Zoe were fighting, which wasn't necessarily rare but this was a quiet and cold fight which Kaylee noted from the periphery of their interactions. Shepherd was being all sorts of reflective and thoughtful, and was reading his book more than usual. Inara was mad at Mal for obvious reasons. River had been unwell and sleeping a lot, so Simon was by her side. And Jayne, the self-important bastard… Kaylee rolled over and smacked the wall with one of her brightly colored pillows. She couldn't even think straight about her anger at Jayne.  
It was men like him, men like Jayne, who were the root of nearly all of her most hurtful memories. Men were the cause of so much hurt. All men. Even the ones who seemed like good ones probably still contributed to the hurt. How many "good" men would actually stand up to one of his brethren for the good of a woman. "Good" men. Ha. Truly good men were very few and far between. Given half a chance most of the men Kaylee had ever met would probably take all of the advantages the "bad" men would, they've just gotten better at twisting their own stories to make themselves out to be the hero.  
Her frustration bubbled up and she started wanting to do something about it. She had half a mind to fly back to Rohan and burn the shop to the ground where she first felt a man's fist. Go to the meetin's, which were surely still going on, and kick down the door and tell every one of the scared skinny village girls that they were worth so much more than the coins or paper that a man might grease her parents' hands with in exchange for her childhood. She wanted to do the same in every village and town on every planet and moon. Her aspirations were mounting and a slight sweat broke out on her forehead. Nearly as quickly as the thoughts came, the voice of doubt spoke in the back of her mind. 'You can't do anything like that, little girl. You're lucky to be off-world yourself. Keep your head down and count your blessings. You. Don't. Deserve. More.'  
The weight of the words spoken to herself settled over her like a cold blanket. She curled into a fetal position and lay limply, just allowing the oppressive words of her memories and self-destructive doubt pin her to the bed.

The klaxon alarms roused nearly everyone out of their quarters and the brief but exciting drama which ensued seemed to rouse everyone from their introspective depressions to start acting like themselves again. Having mechanical challenges to work through alongside Wash brought Kaylee back to herself. Moving her hands made the darkest parts of her mind settle back into silence. After it was all through and they were safe Kaylee had time to think about Saffron, or whatever her real name was, and she surprised herself with a smile. She was doing it. Slowly and perhaps in a misguided way, but she was doing it. She had found a way to separate herself from the chaos of the world and get what she wants. It might not always work out but she is making it happen in her own way. 'Not so diff'rent from me,' Kaylee thought. 'If thirteen year old Kaylee could see me today she wouldn't hardly recognize this as real life.' She smiled and a small bubble of pride warmed her chest. 'I did it, and I deserved it and I am gonna keep doin' so much more than ever was expected.'


	11. Jaynestown Part 1

(Surprise! Sorry it's been a minute… or one year, one month, and two days. Thank you for the kind words in the reviews, that's what made me decide to give this writing thing another try. Sorry if it's a bit rusty.)

Jaynestown (Part 1)

The days and weeks trickled by after their brief, but eventful, time with Saffron. Most of the crew's mental and emotional dispositions settled back to their pre-Saffron states within a few days… with one notable exception. Kaylee and Jayne had stopped talking to each other completely. They avoided each other in the common areas of the ship and in the rare instances where a job required them to be in the same room they stared pointedly at anyone or anything other than each other. Despite their relationship being the worst-kept secret on the ship, no one knew how or whether to bring up the elephant in the room with either of them. It wasn't as though their jobs strictly required them to work together so the crew silently abode the tension.

Shepherd Book was the first to try and address the issue.

—  
Jayne grunted with effort. His knuckles were white as he gripped the weighted bar and pushed into one last set at the rudimentary bench press station in their gym. Book stood near his head, hands out in his careful spotting position. The older man was severely weakened from his wounding several months ago, his recovery was slow but aided by the attention and care of every member of the crew. Both men knew that if Jayne dropped the weight there was no way Book would be able to assist him, but the two friends both were made happier by the other's presence so the minor details of the spotting role were dismissed from attention. Book nodded in silent encouragement as Jayne pressed through his final few repetitions.  
"You're improving." The older man said. "Though I guess that is to be expected with all the time you've been spending here."  
Jayne furrowed his brow slightly as he returned the bar to a resting position and rolled up to a sitting position.  
"What's that supposed to mean?"  
Book raised his eyebrows in a feign of innocence and waved his hands as though brushing away invisible concerns in the air between them.  
"I mean nothing catty by it, my friend, just that you've seemed to change your perspectives around your exercise regimen. It used to be more of a hobby and done with a purpose for strength and fitness for the job and now…" Book gestured around to their cobbled together equipment briefly before picking up a small set of hand weights that Jayne fashioned for him when Book expressed interest in joining him once again in their gym. "But lately," he added, "you have been here every day with a new fervor that I haven't seen in you in the whole time I've been aboard Serenity."  
Jayne said nothing. He turned his back to his friend and picked up a crate filled with a variety of smaller weights. Slipping his arms through nylon straps on either side he grunted in lieu of an argument. Book watched the younger man start into a set of squats. Sweat soaked through the back of his dirty gray shirt. The moist fabric clung to Jayne's back and Book observed not for the first time that the young man carried less fat about his body than he did only a few months ago. While never heavy, he used to have a softness about his midsection and on his limbs which covered his muscular bulk with a bit of subtlety. Now his friend was made of harder angles and bitter edges. Book sighed inwardly and focused on his own hands. They trembled less now than they did even just a few weeks ago. Completing a set of bicep curls with weights that he knew must only weigh a pound each was enough to make his arms ache and a cause fine mist of sweat to develop on his brow. Taking a deep breath and letting it out in a sigh, Book set his small weights down on a shelf and sat looking at Jayne.  
"Have you tried talking to her?"  
" _Shen me_?"  
"Don't pretend with me, Jayne. You aren't fooling me. You haven't talked with her, have you?" Book's voice betrayed none of the disappointment that one might expect from a preacher. He spoke calmly and in a manner of one stating bland facts. Jayne grunted again. Book waited until his friend completed the set of squats. His patient demeanor masked the subtle drilling of the older man's eyes into the back of Jayne's head. Finally he could take no more and Jayne turned around and faced his friend. The older man's soft brown eyes were calm but firm, expecting Jayne to speak first.  
Jayne grabbed a towel from the corner of their gym space and mopped the sweat from his face. "She don't wanna talk to me."  
"And why do you think that is?"  
"Because she's mad at me."  
Book's eyebrows furrowed almost imperceptibly. "You know what I'm going to ask."  
Jayne sighed which sounded more like a growl and he threw the towel down, anger creeping into his voice. "Aw hell, preacher, what do you want me to say? I don't know what's in her head! She's mad 'cause I don't wanna be in a gorram triangle. She wants…" Jayne caught himself before revealing too much of his actual fears. "I don't know what she wants." He finished lamely in a quiet voice.  
Shepherd Book nodded solemnly. "Have you considered asking her what she wants?"  
Jayne became irritated again, "I know what she's gonna SAY she wants, she wants 'Freedom', she wants 'Open', and she wants -" Jayne stopped once more before saying Simon's name. "-Someone else." Anger filled him up inside and pressed against the inside of his head. Saying aloud all of the things he feared was like letting a beast out of its cage. A low roar began in Jayne's chest and he raised up on the balls of his feet. Rotating suddenly, like a snake darting out to snatch a mouse, Jayne sunk a fist into the heavy bag hanging from the steel beams above them. The bag jumped and swung away from the strike and Jayne caught it with a jab from his other fist upon its return. "She - don't - want - me." Each grunted word punctuated by a strike, as though the sound of his fists beating the vinyl surface of the bag were trying to cover up the pain the words caused him.  
Book lowered himself to a cautious seated position on the edge of the bench denoting the bench press station and watched Jayne silently.  
Jayne's noises of effort and emotion grew in volume until they echoed back to the two men from the high metal walls of the ship's docking bay. Several minutes passed, the echoed rhythm of strike after strike after strike, Jayne's grunts betraying the pain in his raw throat, and finally it seemed Jayne deflated. He let the bag swing into his body and he caught it with both arms. Book saw blood trickling down from his friend's ruined knuckles.  
"Jayne," Book said in a soft voice, "my friend." He rose from the bench and laid a cool hand on Jayne's twitching bicep. Sweat and blood together dropping against the metal floor in quiet pings. "You have value."  
Jayne's hands slid down the bag and hung limply at his sides. Book didn't move, but kept his hand on his friend's arm. "And maybe I should have started with that."

Kaylee smiled as she leaned against the ladder outside the Tams' quarters. Moments like this made her feel like things were good, not in the way that they used to be good, but a new different kind of good.  
"I just think that there are times and places where reacting in such an open manner is more appropriate, and conversely," Simon stated defensively, "there are times where keeping one's reaction closed is a better choice."  
Kaylee rolled her eyes playfully. "Well _xiǎn rán_ there's a time and a place for keeping mum but, honestly, Simon? You NEVER swear!"  
"I swear!" Simon's blush creeping into his pale cheeks, "…When it's appropriate."  
Kaylee enjoyed this. Teasing Simon was so easy since he was already flustered most of the time. She sensed, though, that when bantering with her he was more at ease than his normal levels of fluster he showed in literally every other scenario on Serenity. 'Not when he's doctorin' though,' Kaylee thought, smiling inwardly. They had that in common. Doing the work they were meant to be doing. She understood that specific level of peace. Kaylee had been spending more time with Simon in the last few weeks. She tried not to think about who she would have been spending that time with prior to the falling out.  
That's how she liked to think about what happened between her and Jayne, a falling out. It seemed like a good phrase. As though the two of them had been on a boat. They held on to each other and they'd been safe and stable. But then the boat started rocking and she realized that holding onto him was going to bring her down, so she let go and they fell out. And while swimming on her own was hard and scary at first, she felt like she was going to drown. Soon, though, she realized that she was a strong swimmer.  
" **Coming into orbit over Canton**." Wash's voice broke in on Kaylee's thoughts and interrupted her conversation with Simon.  
"We'd better get ready to land…" Simon said softly, his blush was still present around his cheeks. Kaylee liked having that effect on him, it made their flirting seem less one sided than it used to. She smiled and let go of the ladder rung she'd been leaning on during their chat. She reached out and squeezed his arm gently as she stepped by him, his arm felt warm beneath the cool silky fabric of his shirt. She slipped her arm into his and he smiled slightly and stood up straighter, as though escorting her into a ball.  
"Ah, I've got Serenity squared away. Wash can handle the landing on his own. What are your plans for while we're docked?"  
Simon shrugged, "I've been meaning to re-organize some of the storage compartments in the med bay."  
The two started walking toward the small sterile room. It had been nearly a year since Kaylee had been shot in the stomach and the brave doctor had saved her life. Despite the time passing and her feelings toward Simon, Kaylee hated that room. She couldn't step foot into it without feeling a twinge of phantom pain in her belly and feeling helpless and cold. Memories, too, of holding Shepherd Book's hand for hours at a time, not knowing whether he could feel it or if his shallow breathing would suddenly stop. So much anxiety and pain and cold fear were associated with the ship's infirmary. Kaylee knew it was silly, it was a room just like any other. The two rounded the corner from the small residential passageway where Simon and River's quarters were and they stepped into view of the infirmary. Simon dropped Kaylee's arm immediately and Kaylee stepped away from him with a small twinge of guilt as she saw Jayne.  
"What is going on here?!" Simon shouted. Jayne was in the infirmary and Simon's gauze, tape, tools, and medical detritus was strewn about as though a tornado had gone through the small room.  
Jayne looked up and a dark cloud passed behind his eyes when he saw the two of them standing near each other.  
"Was lookin' for tape." He grunted at the doctor, and cast his eyes downward intentionally keeping Kaylee out of his focus.  
"So you had to tear the whole room apart?" Simon ran his fingers through his dark shiny hair. He was back to his non-flirty and generally what-am-I-doing-here style of flustered.  
Kaylee stayed back and kept her own face tilted slightly downward as well. She watched Simon as he scurried around his domain, attempting to pick up and put away objects but seeming overwhelmed by what to pick up first. She drifted slightly back from the door to the infirmary. Jayne appeared to ignore both of them now so she allowed herself a moment to take him in. It had been just over three weeks since they had exchanged words at all. Their jobs didn't require them to interact and when not working they had made a point to not socialize or relax anywhere near the other. She noticed that his body looked harder than it used to, he'd lost some weight and it made his muscles stand out. She also took in the dried blood on his knuckles. That looked bad, she'd seen him split a knuckle before on a job or two, but they hadn't had any rough encounters lately. In the last three weeks Kaylee had been feeling like she was a pretty strong swimmer. She was doing just fine on her own and it was allowing her the freedom to explore new emotions and experiences with Simon. But in this moment, taking in Jayne standing shirtless in the infirmary (apparently taping weapons to his body?) she realized that there was something that she missed about their boat. Swimming was hard work and the chance to rest in strong, warm arms… Kaylee shook her head. She was being silly now. They were just not compatible, at least not any more. She knew what he wanted, she was sure of it. He wanted a woman he could control, one that he could possess. Being owned isn't worth the false stability of a relationship. She'd learned that over and over in her life before Serenity and she'd let it go too far with Jayne. She had started to get attached, and he certainly had. No, she was better of on her own for now. And Jayne would get over it, if he hadn't already. Turning away from the men arguing, or rather Simon shouting and Jayne ignoring him, Kaylee trotted off to her quarters to get ready to put her feet on solid ground again.


	12. Jaynestown Part 2

Jaynestown (Part 2)

Jayne felt sweat trickle down the back of his neck. The day was muggy and the air smelled rank from the methane seeping out of the hot ground as the indentured workers stirred the clay pits. Occasional bubbles of gas from the rotten peat would rise to the surface in a rank belch. A bit of mud from the top of the bubble would fling itself in random directions and thick drops of muck would land back in the pit with a loud slapping plop. The tired, broken down people knee deep in mud didn't react to it, but the well dressed doctor walking three paces ahead of Jayne flinched away dramatically every time. Three paces, slip his right arm around the small man's skinny shoulder, slide the back of his hand up the left side of his stupid face. Grip the back of his jaw on the left-hand side and pull back sharply. Stabilize the target's fragile body with his left hand throughout the brief process. The dull snap would ripple through the doctor's dying flesh and Jayne would drop him to the ground. The last thing his pale, clean face would betray would be a look of confusion, and the last thing he'd see would be Jayne standing over his broken body…  
"Town is up ahead." Mal's voice broke through Jayne's distracted thoughts. Town? That didn't sound good.  
"Mal, I don't think you realize. I been here before and I crossed the leader o' this planet. I can't risk bein' recognized!" Jayne tried to keep his voice low, but anxiety was creeping in.  
Wash smiled, trying to keep from laughing at the tall man hunching himself down to hide among the small group. "You haven't been back here in years! Do you really think all this paranoia is necessary?" The jovial pilot interjected. "They're not going to remember you!"  
"I think there's a chance that they might." Mal stated flatly.

Jayne almost walked into his boss' back as they all stopped suddenly near the center of the small cluster of mud colored buildings which passed for the workers' settlement. He looked around at his shipmates who all seemed to be frozen in different expressions. Mal looked concerned, Simon looked appalled, Kaylee looked confused, and Wash looked downright delighted. Jayne followed their gazes and looked into his own face. Even in crudely carved clay he could recognize his own shape looking back at him. Clean-shaven and a few years younger. But of course, if there was any shred of doubt for him to cling to, it was thrown aside by the small plaque leaning against the earthen man's feet, which clearly read: JAYNE COBB.

After some discussion, and several questions which Jayne had no ruttin answers for whatsoever, Jayne was able to urge their small group to move away from that eerie-ass piece of work and on with their increasingly eerie-assed day. Unfortunately, the eerie-assed-ness of it all just got worse instead of better when they settled into the tavern to kill the time before their man would arrive and they could move forward with this had-better-be-gorram-worth-all-this-trouble job.

Some memories from his first visit to this stinking planet flooded back to him as he threw back his second mug of mudders' milk. The alcohol was slowly seeping into his body and the ever present target on his back started to feel a little further away. He'd had a good night in this town the first time he was here. He had been young and between merc gangs for employment. He and one other criminal had come to rob the magistrate blind. He'd been here in this very tavern the night before the job went down. His partner had gotten sloppy drunk and headed up to spend most of his money on some of the local girls who would let the cleaner than average stranger do just about whatever he pleased as long as he paid good enough for it and it helped them save enough money to buy off some time on their contracts. Jayne had slumped against the wall and watched the room. It was a company town so everyone in the room, save for the barkeep, had the same job. That went for the women currently upstairs with his colleague as well. The folks worked on four shifts: six hours of hard labor followed by six hours light(er) labor followed by twelve hours off. As soon as the whistle blew and the next shift would come into the pits, the mudders, exhausted and caked in in clay until their limbs felt dead and like they were living pieces of dirt themselves, would drag themselves onto the firm ground and trudge into town. They'd clean themselves the best they could with buckets of clean water which would almost immediately become unrecognizable from the mud in the pits. And then they'd be free to exist as human beings for a spell before starting again. Most what didn't have small children to care for, and some that did, would find their way to the tavern to fill their bellies and to numb the pain in their bodies and souls.  
Jayne had scanned the room with a careful eye, he was a criminal after all. He didn't think that the mudders much cared who he was, but if one of them had caught wind of their plan and thought they'd get a shiny coin or an extra 10 minute break out of the deal they'd turn him over to the overseer or one of the magistrate's thugs in a heartbeat.  
He'd been starting to feel the weight of sleep in his arms and chest when a soft voice spoke at his shoulder.  
"Another milk?" Jayne jumped slightly and whirled his head around to see who'd snuck up on him.  
It was a woman. She was young, probably early twenties like himself.  
"Uh. Yeah." Jayne grunted. The woman smiled in a way that hinted that she was inwardly laughing at him. Jayne felt heat rise in his face for two reasons. One: if she had wanted to, she could have slipped a blade between his ribs before he'd have had the chance to pull his gun out of its holster. Two: she was pretty and he had eyes.  
She wasn't model pretty like you might see on a central planet, but she was strong and held herself with confidence. She had bright eyes. Jayne kicked himself for having that realization, he was horny. The mud smudged on her face had dried in narrow trickles where the dirty water had dried as beads of it trickled down her skin after she came off shift. He had seen her earlier. She had been walking around with a jug of milk ready to fill up the mugs of her brothers and sisters in servitude to help them make it through the day. In exchange she got maybe a few pennies from each of them, since they didn't have much to share in the first place.  
"Vera Mo'ehi," she said by way of introduction as she expertly poured the thick beer into his mug.  
"Jayne Cobb," Jayne said and then immediately kicked himself for giving his name. So much for in and out, keep your head down. Now tomorrow when the magistrate's thugs kick the door in after the loot is noticed missing and they say 'ten credits and a day off for anyone who knows anything about the strangers in town last night' this woman would be the one sitting pretty and the pompous rich guy would know Jayne's name. His eyes dropped to the floor as she stepped on away from him. He raised them first to his mug and then to her ass as she stepped between drunken mudders on her way back to the bar.  
Now Jayne hadn't done too many of these jobs. He'd spent most of his time, over the last few years, hooked up with larger mercenary groups. It was only a handful of times where an opportunity arose when he'd gone off with just one or two other thieves, bounty hunters, or crooks with a specific score involved. After the score they'd split the profit and go their separate ways. But even though he'd only done a few of these, he knew that he should be keeping his wits about himself right now. He should be focusing on getting the job done until it's done. Distraction now could mean messing something up later and losing the money, or losing his life. But as he watched Vera's hips swing in her mud-colored clothing across the mud-colored room he felt a twinge in his lowers which reminded him of the long gap of time since his last rumble. He'd been working a lot lately, spending a lot of time together with angry and tension-filled mercs and being left little time for relaxation apart from some beers with his business partners. Decompression of a different kind was necessary after such a gap.  
Vera stopped at the bar and set the pitcher of mudders' milk down on the counter. She had a few words that Jayne couldn't overhear with the barkeep who nodded wordlessly and went back to wiping out a mug with a dirty looking rag. Jayne took a swig of milk and then noticed the woman walking toward him again. She walked up to him confidently and sat down next to him. Vera's eyebrows arched slightly as though telling him she had the higher ground of social power in this situation, and that she knew that, that they both knew that.  
"Don't'cha have to work?" Jayne said, nodding toward the bar.  
"I've decided not to work tonight."  
"Jus' like that?" Jayne took a swig of milk trying to keep calm. She could be here to rob him. Then again that twinge in his shorts had become a throb that was slowing waking up his lately-ignored libido.  
Vera shrugged, "Max'll get more tips tonight, he don't mind. Besides, I have something else I want to do."  
Jayne grinned, his cheek twitched behind his mug. He swallowed some more of the heavy beer and felt heat in his stomach which spread though his chest and below.  
"An' what's that?" Jayne dropped his mug and tilted his head to get a better look at her.  
"You," she grinned.  
"I don't have money." Jayne said, wanting to be up front to avoid any awkward disappointment. Instead Vera shook her head.  
"I don't do that. But I do know that I've had a long day of work and you're new in town. And I need to relax and you've got energy that the mud pits ain't sucked out yet. You're gonna help me relax." Jayne took her in. Her soft brown hair lay down across her shoulders, lightly lifted by her breasts under her plain dress. Jayne's eyes trailed down and then slowly up, stopping on her lips, then her eyes which seemed to flash with excitement. She was acting impulsively and was getting a thrill out of this. He felt his cock thickening, and heat swirled in his stomach.  
"Alright then. I, er, live to… serve?" He said and then cringed slightly, why did he have to be so lame sounding? 'Think of something smooth, Jayne!' "Uh. Where would you like to relax?"  
Vera smiled, "I got a place."  
The woman stood and started walking toward the stairs in the back of the room. Jayne found himself following her. There was a small voice in the back of his head which reminded him to keep his guard up, she could pull a weapon or this could be a distraction to let someone else take him out from behind. But no one followed them up the stairs, and when they stepped inside one of the small rooms on the second floor he couldn't see any concerning hiding-places from which someone might ambush him. The room was bare aside from a bed and a small dresser with a large basin of clean water and a cake of soap. The soap smelled like lemon which made Jayne want to laugh for some reason. Jayne closed the door behind them, not sure what was going to happen first. He paused with his hand still on the door knob. Vera paused for a moment and then stepped in close to his body. She hesitated only for a moment, giving him a chance to move away or give some resistance, but no move was made and Jayne's lips had gone soft while heat rushed to his cock. Vera then closed the distance and raised her lips to his. Her fingers slid down his stomach. His abs flexed as he arched his body into hers. His lips slid against her mouth and a tickle went through his chest. She leaned into him and his back pressed against the door. She pinched the bottom of his thin shirt and slid the fabric up his chest. The warm night and the closeness of the air left tiny spots of sweat across his freshly exposed skin. Jayne allowed his shirt to be raised, exposing one of his hidden weapon straps. The holster was on his back, easily accessible by reaching his hand across his lower back. The leather strap was against his skin across his chest. Vera paused for a moment. Jayne took that as the queue to make his own move. He removed his shirt on his own, leaving the holster right where it was, and dropped the garment to the floor. Vera lowered her hands and looked up into his face. Jayne raised his hands to the laces at her neck, serving to draw the bodice of her simple dress together. Jayne pulled the loose knot of a string made of twisted yarn, rough with exposure to clay that could never be washed out. The knot came apart in his hands and her dress opened easily, exposing a simple slip underneath. Jayne slid the dress off her shoulders and it dropped to the ground with his shirt. Vera broke off the kiss and looked him down and up as she slid her undergarment off and added it to the pile.  
Jayne unbuckled his primary holster and rested it gingerly on the dresser. With his other hand he gently felt around the door for the lock, there was a small one on the handle and he addressed it now. He couldn't have anyone busting in while he was otherwise occupied. He dropped his pants and exposed a mid-sized knife strapped to his lower leg and a small one in his opposite boot. He lowered himself into a kneeling position, and loosened the laces on his boots. He straightened and stepped out of his boots and pants. Vera then knelt and arranged their clothing over the rough wood floor, forming a small padded surface. She then took the bowl of water down and set it on the ground. She took the cake of soap and the small towel and knelt on the clothes. She dipped the towel in the water and then looked up at Jayne expectantly. Wordlessly Jayne lowered himself onto the floor in front of her. He sat awkwardly back on his heels and watched Vera rub the lemon soap against the now wet towel. The sharp scent tickled his nose and he found the way it intermingled with his arousal to be slightly disorienting. Vera took the wet towel and brought it up the front of her body. A brush-stroke of water and tiny bubbles painted its way up her body. Jayne saw the water accumulate and trickle down her stomach and onto her legs. Some rivulets got caught up in the bit of fuzz between her legs. Jayne's eyes tracked up her body. She brought the towel up her neck and across her face. She bent forward slightly and re-wet the towel before caressing the back of her neck, the water trickled down her body and glistened on her skin. Vera leaned and re-wet the towel and looked into Jayne's face. Moving slowly, Vera slid two fingers under the strap of the chest strap for his back holster. Jayne tensed slightly but didn't make a move to stop her. Carefully, Vera brought the towel against his stomach, his core tensed under her touch. She gently brought the towel up his body. She slid the cool wet cloth against his skin and under the strap which had left a red rope of skin across his chest. The bright smell of the soap tickled his nose and the cool water trickling across his skin made goosebumps shimmer across his body. Jayne gently took the towel and washed his own face before dipping the towel again and lifting one of Vera's arms with his other hand. He started at her wrist and carefully caressed her skin with the sharp smelling water, the shining skin left smooth and clean behind the soft wet towel. He washed up and down one arm and then the other before Vera took the towel back and washed his arms in turn. And then she made him almost laugh out loud by washing his short hair until it stood up on end in funny angles. She stood and brought the towel down both of her legs, leaning over to re-wet it and providing Jayne with different angles of her to admire. Jayne stood and kissed her. The ceremonial feel of the bathing had almost distracted his 'neathers from their purpose here, but that purpose came back and he bit his lip lightly.  
"Get my back?" Vera said, her voice thick with anticipation. She turned her back to him and set a knee on the bed. Jayne dipped the towel into the water once again and picked up the cake of soap from the small rough plate. He first slid a finger across the back of her neck and gently pushed her hair over her shoulder. He then drew the wet towel across her back, from shoulder to shoulder and then down, before sliding the small brick of coarse soap across her skin. He felt goosebumps raise under the rough palm of his hand and warmth rippled through him. Jayne slid the towel down across his own lower belly and he wrapped a wet, towel covered, hand around his shaft. Vera leaned forward on her knee and climbed onto the bed. She lowered herself to a hip and turned to look at him. Jayne smiled and dropped the towel on the floor before setting his knee on the bed beside her legs. Vera rotated her body to meet him as his hand came down onto the bed next to her. She reached out and slid a hand under his arm and up the back of his shoulder. A vague tension arose in which he calculated how far her hand was from his weapon, but her hand didn't stop or change direction. With the hand on his upper back she pulled him into her body, and suddenly Jayne felt the other as her fingers snaked through his wet hair. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. His hand slid up the center of her chest, following the roadsigns of her arousal as though her bones had lay arrows and directions for him. His rough hand crossed the skin of her breast, the tip of her nipple tickling his fingers and palm. His fingertips slid along the curve of her collarbone before tracing down over her shoulder and down her back until his palm landed on her hip, which was still raised slightly off the bed in her body's subtle twist in his direction. Jayne gripped her hip and felt the solid muscles in her body tense and ripple in response to his touch. She rolled toward him, arching herself slightly and raising her knee to slide up the outside of his leg. Their mutually freshly washed skin was still moist and her flesh felt cool against his. Jayne glanced down and admired the view as she opened herself to him.  
"I'm fully vaxxed," he said quietly, "and clean." Vera smiled and pulled him in for another kiss.  
"Good," she murmured back, "I'm vaxxed too, and it's good to be clean." Fireworks went off in Jayne's head. She kissed him and brought her hips up to grind against his. Jayne couldn't help but let the moan escape. His joints felt weak for a moment and he rolled his own hips against her, the underside of his now-rigid shaft slid up against her wet folds. He felt her tremble in his arms slightly. It passed in a chill and she noticed him pause.  
"Do you want to keep going?" She asked him when she came up from air out of their deep kiss.  
"Yeah," Jane replied, "You?"  
"Qǐng yes." She brought her lips back to his.  
Jayne slid one hand behind her knee and lifted gently. He lined himself up carefully before settling his weight between her legs. He lowered his mouth to her collarbone and inhaled softly as he entered her. He let the air out in a low groan as his girth stretched her tight lips, her layers opening up to him and rippling around him. Vera groaned with relief and rocked her hips against him, encouraging him to start moving. Jayne began sliding against her slowly at first, but as Vera's reactions urged him on, he found himself moving with more vigor. Vera slid both hands up the back of his neck and head and pulled his face close to hers. He rested his forehead against hers for moment before sliding his hand below her back and pulling her up to him. He slid his knee forward and she was sitting in his lap now. Upright, her breasts bounced against his chest with every thrust. Vera dropped one hand to his hip to steady herself and the other began stroking her clit. Jayne leaned back now to get a better view and to watch her bounce on his cock. The more her eyebrows furrowed in concentration the harder he wanted to fuck her. She was building up to a big one, he could tell. Small moans began to escape past her control. The sound sunk into his chest and made him tingle all over. Jayne lay back and Vera reached out a hand to brace herself against the wall while the other kept massaging her hot clit. With his newfound space to move, Jayne redoubled his efforts and thrust into her rhythmically. Soon he saw and felt the tell-tale signs of orgasm, and by the time the sounds burst from her, he was losing control himself. The floodgates dropped and he'd gone over the waterfall, the pit of his stomach dropped slightly and he came hard. He felt the sweat on his skin go hot then cold, and he felt Vera lean hard against the wall over him, breathing deeply. Jayne adjusted himself slightly and made room for her to come down and lay with him, which she obliged after a moment of catching her breath. Jayne's chest was still rising and falling more dramatically than usual. Her hand went down and carefully stroked him until the last of his orgasm had milked out. Vera laid down on his arm with her head next to his. Jayne reached his hand between her legs and gently drew his fingertip around the outside of her hot quivering lips, still twitching from their own orgasm.  
They laid for a while until the silence of the post-coital awkwardness settled over them both. Few words were exchanged as they quietly washed and redressed themselves in their damp clothes. Jayne was lacing his boots tightly when he saw Vera picking up the towel once again, she rinsed and rung the fabric a few times before hanging it to dry on an screw angled into the wooden wall. Somehow the screw felt to be too low, too insignificant, for the weight of the towel and what it represented. Jayne finished by re-affixing his main belted holster around his hips and nodding at Vera. She grinned and nodded back to him so he unlatched and opened the door. Jayne made his way back down to the bench by the wall to sit and wait for his rendezvous with his partner so they could go off and rob some rich fuck who wouldn't see it coming.

—  
It was a good memory. Jayne just started to feel relaxed when the man at the corner of the bar started to strum on a guitar.

"Jayne," the man sang. "The man they call Jayne."


	13. Jaynestown Part 3

(I had made some changes to Part 1 of Jaynestown before publishing and just now decided to go back and change them back. Just a small change to Book and Jayne's conversation in the gym. Also, in this chapter I messed with the timeline from the episode a bit. No real reason, just felt like it. Nothing to write home about. Chapter content warning: Intoxication and intoxicated group sex. Enjoy!)  
Jaynestown (Part 3)

"Aw hell."  
A cheer erupted in the crowded tavern at the opening lines of the song. Jayne dropped his chin down even lower and tried to dissolve completely into the bench. The members of his crew all looked around at him, as though some explanation for this nightmare hell-scape would be written on Jayne's horrified face.  
"Need another drink." He grunted out, dismissing himself from having to provide any answers to their questions. Not that he had any answers anyway. He had no ruttin' idea why anyone on this planet would have any fond memories of him. Save for one, but that was purely casual. Jayne hit the rough wood of the bartop with his empty mug. "More milk."  
Jayne was briefly surprised when he recognized the grizzled barkeep, Max, when the stoic man turned around at the sound of his voice. Jayne dropped his face and feigned looking over his shoulder at the man playing the guitar as the thick liquid glugged into his mug. Jayne nodded and grunted in lieu of thanks and dropped a few coins on the counter. He was hoping paying now would make Max care less about Jayne and his table than if they had an outstanding tab, but this seemed to backfire. Jayne noticed the old man's crinkled eyes widen slightly at the coins and Jayne kicked himself internally.  
'Gorrammit, they're clean.' Jayne thought. He'd marked himself as an outsider. 'When did I get so bad at this?' He shuffled back to the table and slumped down with his crew. He kept his back to the eerie-ass performance.  
Mal leaned in and pretended to be looking over Jayne's shoulder at the singer. "Jayne," the captain said.  
"Yes, Mal?"  
"While we may not know each other personally, I do think I know your type. How in hell did they get your name? That's the latest part of this that I just can't seem to figure a fit for."  
Jayne shifted slightly. "I may'a told one person my name, but I didn't think it would matter. And then the job went sideways-" Jayne trailed off and lifted one shoulder in a half hearted shrug.  
"And 60,000 untraceable alliance credit chits dropped in the middle of town. So they had a miracle," Mal paused and slowly slid his eyes to lock onto Jayne's, "and the name of the miracle maker."  
Jayne shook his head. He didn't know what to do. Should he apologize? He didn't have any way to know what had happened here. He hightailed it out happy to have a craft to get him back to dark space where he could disappear with relative ease. He'd never heard what happened to his partner on that job. Last he saw of him was when the other man slipped and fell while they were pushing out anything what weren't welded down in order to lighten the load and get out of the range of the missiles the Magistrate's henchmen were firing. He had reached for his partner's flailing body but it was apparent immediately that he'd never get to him in time. Jayne had a strong feeling that he was the only one who made it out that night.  
All that money hit the ground and suddenly every last person in this stinking pit of a town had something to fight for.  
Maybe it was all in his head, but there seemed to be a lot of less-than-subtle glances in his direction, and a fair amount of shuffling out of the bar which made Jayne's danger sense flare up considerably.  
"I gotta get out of here." Jayne muttered to Mal, who nodded and collected his crew with a glance and a 'wrap it up' hand motion. Jayne led the way up the stairs and out to street level. The sun had set and it was no longer possible to see beyond the orange glow of the flickering gas lamps. Which was frankly an aesthetic improvement on the town as a whole. The crowd of mudders gathered around the entrance to the tavern was distinctly not an improvement on anything.

"See?" The people in the front of the group stepped back to give Jayne and his crew some space, they crowded together whispering and pointing. In the low light it was difficult at first to tell who was speaking. Soon Jayne identified that the voice came from a young man in the front, he was coated in mud like the rest of them and Jayne forgave himself the delay in perception as they all blurred together into a dirt colored mass.  
"See?" He repeated, "Jayne Cobb has returned!" A cheer went up from the gathered mudders. The pit of Jayne's stomach felt ice cold. He turned and pushed his way back into the tavern, not sure of the best way out of this. Maybe the bar had a back door. It was built partially underground which allowed it to be one of the few multi-story buildings. Maybe he could make a break for it from a window on the second story. While his mind raced, a voice in the back of his thoughts reminded him to lay low for the few seconds he still had a chance. He slowed to what he hoped came across as a casual pace and grabbed up a mug of milk from the bar in an effort to blend in. Suddenly the barkeep was at his elbow. Max slapped the rough cup out of his hands. The unexpected motion sent Jayne reaching for his holster only to remember that he was woefully unarmed. His hand groped at his hip for a moment before the old man in front of him slammed down a clear glass bottle of brown liquid in front of him.  
"Jayne Cobb don't drink tha' la ji in my bar." Max spoke with a slur that betrayed his age and his livelihood. "'E drinks the bes' whiskey in the house!"  
A cheer rose up from the crowd that had been filing into the room behind him. Jayne spun about in a panic, he saw his crew against the back wall. But in the space between them a sea of people had appeared by some curse of some trickster diety with a sick sense of humor.

The next several moments passed in a blur. Aided by a belly full of mudders milk, the mid-range whiskey (which Max had been saving for a special occasion) burned Jayne's throat in a way that made him feel alive. His fears of these people being crazy and wanting to kill him were replaced by the more fun realization that these people are crazy and they loved him. Men and women ranging from old and bent to some kid who barely came up to his hip all wanted to experience him. They came up and thanked him, or hugged him, or poured him more alcohol, or just touched him and cried. It was all sorts of unnatural, but their words began to sink into his booze-soaked mind and he started to feel like he really did deserve it. Hell, they had a riot on account of him! He made them happy and made their miserable lives a little less miserable. They didn't need to know that it was all by fluke that the money fell here and not in the pits or an uninhabited swamp or to the bottom of a lake. The night wore on and Jayne lost sight of his crew. He gave several short drunken toasts and speeches which were all extremely well received. He was starting to have trouble orienting himself vertically and required the aide (which was offered immediately and without question) by a few young people standing near him. As they assisted him up the stairs in the back of the tavern Jayne glanced back and his bleary eyes fell on Kaylee and Simon. They both looked quite drunk and having a good time. Simon was reclined on a bench with his fancy jacket rolled up on the armrest. He needed that place for his head to be propped because Kaylee was straddling the young doctor and their lips were locked enthusiastically.  
Anger flared up in his chest, mixed with something else that made him wonder if he would vomit. He tried to say something, but it just came out as a series of unintelligible sounds. There were three people helping to get him maneuvered up the stairs. A young man, Jayne thought he remembered him saying his name was Caid, and two young women. The women were hard for him to tell apart, he knew one was Rosalie and the other one was… aw hell he couldn't remember. Caid supported Jayne with his shoulder pushed into Jayne's armpit and his arm slung over the younger man's shoulders. Not-Rosalie opened the door to a room upstairs. His booze addled mind registered that it wasn't the room he'd romped with Vera in all those years ago. This one also had a dresser with the basin of water and soap, but the bed was much larger. Jayne registered as he flopped unceremoniously face down onto the bed that it was actually two smaller mattresses pushed together on a bigger frame.  
He closed his eyes and let the world stop spinning for a moment. He may have drifted off to sleep briefly, or possibly simply blacked out. The next thing he sensed was the sharp smell of lemon soap. Jayne opened his bleary eyes and saw Rosalie and not-Rosalie and Caid gingerly removing his clothing. They were all mostly undressed themselves and appeared to be completing that washing ritual on each other and on him. Jayne lifted a hand and rubbed it across his chest, he then held it up to his eyes and squinted. The cool clean water was still clinging to him. The scent from the soap seemed to help wake him up. He reached out toward the three young people, now they looked much different than they did when assisting him up the stairs. He could tell that all three of them were underfed but otherwise looked healthy. He could tell that Rosalie had dark brown hair that hung to her shoulders. She appeared to have recently scrubbed her face because her cheeks were rosy from the friction, but the lines around her eyes and mouth showed either age or just hard living. The girl, he had to stop thinking of her as Not-Rosalie, but until he could ask the question and remember the answer that'd have to do, was short and stocky. She had short reddish hair that looked as though she had just washed it out. Trickles of water dripped from her bright locks onto her shoulders and breasts. Caid had also washed his hair, it was short and black and currently was standing up in ridges where he'd run his fingers through it in lieu of a comb. Caid's body was lankey and long, he was almost wirey. All three of them had the muscles from hard labor. All of them were gently and methodically washing Jayne's body. He lowered his eyes to notice for the first time that he was fully nude. He noticed his boots by the door and his clothes all folded carefully on top of the dresser.  
He tried to speak but his throat was dry. Caid handed him a glass of clear water and Jayne nodded and took a swallow. And then another. Jayne licked his lips and closed his eyes in concentration.  
"I'm vaxxed, an'… an' what's your name?" He pointed.  
"Sora," the redheaded girl blushed. Jayne nodded and pointed at the other two in turn.  
"Caid an' Rosalie?"  
They nodded enthusiastically as he spoke their names.  
Sora dipped the towel she was holding into the water and wrung it out before caressing his hand with it. She gently dabbed the wet cloth on his knuckles which he only just now noticed looked much better than they had when he first came to this… this great little moon. What a great town. What great gorram people. When Sora finished cleaning his knuckles he lifted his hand and took hers.  
"Thank you." He focused hard on pronouncing the words without a slur or stutter. She seemed shocked at his words. Jayne pulled his gaze away from her pale and freshly scrubbed body and they came to rest on first Caid and then Rosalie in turn. "Thank you. Thank you." They all appeared to be equally amazed and grateful to be addressed. Rosalie had been cleaning his knuckles on his other hand and when she finished he reached out and caressed her face. Her dark hair was damp from the bathing that Jayne wasn't present for, but it looked like she'd run a comb through her hair and the strands fell down in loose twists on her shoulders and some clung coolly to the skin of his wrist and tickled the sensitive skin on his inner forearm as she leaned into his palm.  
Jayne felt sudden concern that he didn't want any of them to feel neglected. They needed this, they needed him. He felt the burden of their belief in him settle onto his shoulders. Turning back to Sora he slid his hand up her muscled arm and drew his fingertips down her glistening skin to stroke her small breast, the nipples stood out and cast small shadows from the dim lamps. Jayne rocked his upper body up in a crunch and thanked the time he'd spent pining away in the gym as he seemed to still have strength despite the alcohol and exhaustion saturating his body. Jayne reached his hand out to Caid who had been standing at the foot of the bed. The young man responded to his reach and met him half-way, kneeling cautiously about even with Jayne's knee. They looked into each others' eyes for a moment and exchanged all the information they needed to with a slow blink and a nod.  
A small smile came onto Caid's face and Jayne brought himself up into a sitting position, meeting the other man's lips. Jayne felt five separate hands on his body and the attention was both overwhelming and exciting. Jayne had been lucky enough to find himself in a few situations before now where there were multiple partners to attend to. They certainly weren't the norm for him, though, and he found it to be almost like work until the rhythm found itself. Jayne leaned back and closed his eyes. There were hands and mouths all over his body and he couldn't tell where one partner ended and another began. Jayne began slowly bucking his hips and grinding his cock into the soft warm crevasses which rose to greet him. He checked in periodically with his own limbs. His right hand was cupping someone's vulva, his fingers diving into their soft core while his thumb flicked at their swollen clitoris. The owner of that body was gyrating against his hand slightly, urging him to continue. His left hand was wrapped around someone's firm shaft. He worked the shape carefully and ran his thumb down the ridge on the underside of their cock. There were at least one hand and two mouths on his own erection. Another mouth was on his neck.

Jayne didn't know how long they writhed intertwined with each other, he'd lost count of all the soft peaks and valleys of pleasure he'd endured and shared. At some point he simply drifted to sleep coaxed into relaxation by warm bodies, hands, and mouths. They slept wrapped around each other; arms and legs twisted together under a thin rough sheet. Too soon, the morning sun stabbed through the open window and split the lids of Jayne's eyes, puffy and tender from not enough sleep and too much booze. The light sent a sharp pain through to the back of his skull and he squeezed his eyes shut and turned away from the unwelcome invading photons. Waves or particles, let the physicists decide, all Jayne cared was that they left him be.

One of the people in his bed, the older of the two women (Rosalie, his sleepy mind reminded him after a moment) also stirred. She looked around and then up into his face and had the look of someone realizing the dream they'd been having was real. Her dark eyes widened as she saw him looking at her.  
"Rosalie?"  
She nodded vigorously. The movement caused the other two to stir.  
"Rosalie, do you know a woman from here by the name o' Vera?" Jayne furrowed his brow until the rest of her name came to him, "Vera Mo'ehi."

Rosalie met Jayne's question with a puzzled expression but Caid spoke up from Jayne's other side.  
"Vera's gone. She got out."

Jayne struggled against the twisted sheet and the limbs and got his elbows against the bed. Propping himself up he fixed Caid with a quizzical look.  
"You knew her? What happened?"

Caid nodded. The young man rolled off the end of the bed and started moving around the room collecting his clothes.  
"Yeah, I knew her pretty good. My dad was a pretty heavy drinker, I spent a lot of time downstairs when I was young waiting for him to get tired enough that I could convince him to leave. That was before I was old enough to start in the pits. I was probably 10 or 11 when Vera started working for Max on her off shifts. She'd keep me company and teach me games and tell me stories."  
Jayne's brow furrowed. "How… how old 're ya now?" He tried to keep his voice casual, but some guilt seeped into the question. In the daylight Caid looked much younger than both Rosalie and Sora, both of whom where now awake and making moves to dress themselves.  
Caid smirked. " _Bú yòng dān xīn_. I'm 18. I been in the pits for almost 3 years now. With two of us working we'll get my dad's debt gone in just another couple years and then we're out of here too." Jayne nodded and felt some color rise into his cheeks. He'd been too drunk last night. "Anyway," Caid continued, "Vera paid her debt off not long after Jaynesday… the day you let the money hit sky right over town," the teen added when he saw Jayne's brow furrow again.

Sora picked up her clothes and picked up the story from Caid. "The Magistrate's men rolled into town with guns and were makin' mind to take it back. But there were more a' us then them." Sora pulled her underclothes on and tossed Rosalie's dress to her. The raven haired woman caught it with a smile and blew Sora a kiss. The young redhead cracked a genuine smile and Jayne wondered who these three were for certainly they didn't just pop into existence the moment they appeared under his limbs when he was too drunk to stand.

"Were ya'll here?" Jayne asked.

Rosalie shook her head, but Caid and Sora nodded. "I had just started in the pits," Sora said. "I thought I was going to die. We start at sixteen here. I was small for my age, or so my ma always said, and I was always afraid I'd fall down in the mud an' get pulled under…" Her voice trailed off with a slight tremble as her eyes slid out of focus, imagining drowning in the thick cold darkness. "I thought I was going to die," she repeated a little quieter. "But that night that you dropped the money? I had just drug myself back into town, I barely had the strength left to wash myself off that night. But suddenly everyone was shouting and pointing up. I was scared that the low plane was gonna drop bombs on us, like ma told me about from her days as a browncoat in the war. In a way I was relieved, it was going to end all our pain and sufferin'. But instead of a bomb blowing up in the town and killin' us all, it was the crates." Jayne hung on her every word. He had been there there, obviously, but he never even noticed that there were people below. All he'd seen was brown. The color of the mud, the streets, the buildings, and the people. Brown fading away to black in the dying light of the evening. He was keeping his eyes on the horizon where the sun was plunging toward the other side of the godsforsaken moon. That last batch of crates sliding out the back of his open cargo bay did the trick and he kept airborne. When he saw the elevation markers on his dash slowly start to increase he felt confident in his escape and jabbed the buttons to close the hatch and he proceeded to leave atmo.  
"The crate nearest to me exploded when it hit ground," Sora continued, "and currency chits spilled out. Everyone fought at first, but soon enough we realized that it wasn't each other that we should be fightin', but the ones who were comin' to take it from us. Ya' see, we realized that we had more in common with each other than we did with them who'd've taken it back. And that even havin' lost all this money, the Magistrate was still richer 'n any and all of us would ever have in all our lifetimes combined. Why should we fight each other for a few scraps when we could fight the big man for all o' it."  
"We picked up whatever weapons we had and fought back. Some people with pea shooters, some with clubs, some with fists." Caid picked up the story. "I was only 13, I hadn't started in the pits yet, but I was pretty strong. I helped a couple other boys knock down one of the Magistrate's guards. While the some of us were distracting him with kicks and punches, one was able to slip his weapon away from him and turn it on the other guards." Jayne's eyebrows raised in respect.  
"It was a massive battle," Sora continued. "There were casualties on both sides, but eventually the Magistrate called off his men. He was losing money on both sides when he was losing workers for his company on the one hand and personal guards on the other. In the end he decided to let us keep it."  
"The community came together in secret and met to decide what to do. The Magistrate didn't know we were doin' in. It was decided to split the money evenly between every person of workin' age. It took a while of deliberatin' to get to that conclusion. Some argued that every family aught to get the same share, which meant more would go to the single folk, others argued that every person of any age should get a share, which meant families with more kids to feed would get more. In the end, though, they split the difference. Every person 16 or older got a share. Some drank theirs away pretty fast, but a lot put the money toward their time. Vera didn't have much left on her debt and was able to buy her freedom only a year or so later."  
"Where'd she go?" He asked with forced indifference. That was years ago, she could be anywhere by now.  
Caid shook his head. "She didn't say. Probably one o' the central planets if I had a guess."

Jayne sat back against his elbows, mesmerized by the story they painted for him with their words. They'd had a battle, a whole gorram rebellion, on account of him. He had changed their whole world. He had made a difference and given people hope. And he'd helped some of them get out. He'd helped Vera get out. Jayne smiled slightly at the thought. He mattered here. He mattered to them.  
His three companions dressed. Rosalie and Sora shared a passionate kiss. Caid smiled at them and Rosalie reached out and pinched the teen's cheek which made him groan and slap away her hand. Sora and Caid shared a light laugh and the redhead took the young man's hand in hers and pulled him toward the door. In the daylight he felt like an awkward addition to their group. The outsider. He didn't really belong with them. He was going to leave this place today (as long as things didn't go sideways again) and they'd stay here for months or years.  
"Shift change in a few." Rosalie said as they stepped toward the door. Jayne nodded. He had work to do too.  
He pulled his clothes on and rubbed his face with a rung out towel. He stepped out into the tavern and made his way down to figure out where his crew went. His heart felt light. He had value. He hadn't felt this way since-  
"Kaylee?" He murmured. He stopped at the top of the stairs and he saw her. She was still asleep, her head on Simon's chest. His fancy jacket covering both of them like a blanket.  
Jayne's feelings were mixed. Some annoyance, some jealousy, but mostly he felt stupid. Why had he let one person make him feel so worthless. He wasn't worthless. Jayne rubbed his hand over his busted knuckles on the other fist and shook his head. Book tried to tell him that he had value, but he hadn't see it until he came back here.


End file.
